->''"Once again a UFO has landed in America, the only country [=UFOs=] ever seem to land in."''-->-- '''News Reporter''', ''WesternAnimation/MonstersVsAliens''

Because most authors [[WriteWhatYouKnow write about what they know]], creators of fictional works tend to set stories in their home city/province/ country, making for well developed, colorful settings. Even when [[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed the actual place names are disguised]], they can still be identified as the author's home territory.

However, sometimes this happens even in contexts where such settings seem unlikely. In this case, lack of imagination or assuming one's audience is unreceptive to anything remotely foreign may play a role. Of course, this is often a case of global realism being sacrificed for local realism. It might seem unlikely for one place to be the focus of so much activity, but setting it in a place the author is familiar with can help to make the setting appear more full-bodied and believable. It can mean the difference between a realistic environment and TheThemeParkVersion.

Sometimes, one country actually is more significant than most other countries in certain contexts, but highly provincial writers and viewers may simply ''assume'' their country has contributed more than any other in ''every'' way, for example, believing that the West-European Theatre was more important than The East-European Theatre in UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo despite only involving 10–25% of the latter's troops and 10% of its deaths, etc., etc. The ThrowAwayCountry trope is what happens when such writers absolutely ''have'' to mention another country.

Please note that [[TropesAreTools Tropes Are Not Bad]] if the alternative is everything happening in [[BigApplesauce New York City]], [[TokyoIsTheCenterOfTheUniverse Tokyo]], or [[BritainIsOnlyLondon London]]. It can also bring wide attention to parts of a country or the the world that were previously little known by most people. See also CulturalPosturing, EaglelandOsmosis, WeAllLiveInAmerica, SmallReferencePools, and HemisphereBias. Compare and contrast AliensInCardiff.

Compare LocalReference. See also EiffelTowerEffect, where every other country is symbolized by a single building.

----!!Examples:[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]* In {{sentai}} and MagicalGirl anime, it is seldom explained why [[CityOfAdventure the heroes all live in such a small area that they will all encounter each other]], and why supernatural villains that attack civilians only do so in areas where the heroes will learn about it. In the most extreme examples, people from the Tokyo area proper are not treated as having a Regional Accent unless the story intentionally takes place elsewhere in the country.** Also, the Tokyo Dialect is used as a nation-wide standard for things like formal, "accentless" speaking and teaching. You could view it as the accents of people in other regions are being illustrated as diverging from the Tokyo Standard norm.** Sailor Moon is especially guilty of this with the only time it was justified was in the second half of season 2 as the villains were from the future and were trying to alter Tokyo. It gets pretty ridiculous in later seasons when the villains are looking for a particular object inside of humans and somehow never decide to target people outside of Tokyo.** The most ridiculous part is that whoever IS carrying what they're looking for will, without fail, ''be in Tokyo.'' (At least we can kinda fanwank that the villains had it on good authority somehow that Tokyo was ''the'' place to look for Whatever.) And 99.9% of the time, it's likely to be carried by one or more of the senshi.* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': The afterlife is Edo Japan with ghosts. Although there are indications that the {{shinigami}} and [[ArcherArchetype quincies]] cover the whole world in their fight against hollows, everything centres around Japan. Even characters that seem to be from other countries all behave like Japanese characters and are based in either Japan or the Japanese afterlife. In fact, despite the hints that hollows affect the entire world, there are no hints at all that the afterlife is anything but Japanese.** That said, Quincies' equipment has a European style and the names of their powers are all German. Similarly Hollows are Spanish flavored.** In addition, the entirety of the human world, except for a few scenes in Mexico and a flashback somewhere vaguely in Europe, are entirely Karakura Town. Not even Japan, just this one city. Hollows seem to only attack Karakura, and Soul Reapers only seem to visit Karakura.* Particularly ethnocentric publishers will publish foreign-made works for profit but attempt to erase most if not all of the obviously alien elements. This has happened quite a bit with [[{{Macekre}} American]] [[CulturalTranslation adaptations]] of {{anime}}.* Japanese manga or animated adaptations of many Western tales or novels normally avoids this for obvious reasons, but there's even some original Japanese stories when the whole plot take place in a foreign country, and sometimes, without Japanese characters that could help to empathize with the audience. This could be justified by the recent change in Japanese attitude towards foreign culture; rather than shunning it, many Japanese people openly embrace Western culture.** ''Anime/CandyCandy'' (takes place in the U.S. and England. No single Japanese character appears here. The closest to JPN symbolism happens during the Nursing School arc: it involves CherryBlossoms [[spoiler: and a CoolOldGuy [[PeacefulinDeath dying peacefully]] underneath them.]])** ''Anime/{{Hellsing}}'' (takes place in England and some parts of Europe and the only named Japanese character that appears is a ''villain''.)** ''Anime/{{Usavich}}'' (takes place in Russia)** ''Anime/{{Monster}}'' (takes place in Germany and the Czech Republic. The only Japanese character is the protagonist, and even then, he's a German citizen.)** ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' (begins in Victorian England, only one part takes place wholly in Japan, and not a single protagonist is fully Japanese. The closest would be Jotaro Kujo and Josuke Higashikata, both being 1/2 Japanese.)** ''Manga/GunSmithCats'' (takes place in the U.S., althrough there's some Japanese characters out there, like Ken Takizawa)** ''Anime/GunslingerGirl'' (takes place in Italy with an entirely European cast)** ''Anime/SandyBell'' (takes place in Scotland)** ''Anime/{{Blassreiter}}'' (takes place in Germany, with a Japanese character appearing on it)** ''Anime/{{Heroman}}'' (takes place in the U.S. and just like ''Manga/{{Hellsing}}'', the only Japanese character is a villain, and a very stupid one for that matter)** ''Anime/HoneyHoneyNoSutekiNaBouken'' (The entire series takes place in Europe, and the only recurrent Asian character is an Arab Oil Sheik who is chasing Honey)** ''Anime/HelloKitty'' (According with Sanrio, she's from England)** ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' (The characters are mostly Caucasian, with only Mikasa being of (half)-Asian descent, and she is implied to be the last of her ethnicity within the Walls. The most widely accepted interpretation of the published maps, interestingly, places the action ''[[AliensInCardiff in]] [[MisplacedWildlife Madagascar]]'', assuming that it's actually on Earth at all.)** ''Manga/{{Cyborg009}}'' takes place at locations all over the world, and only one of the nine cyborgs is Japanese. The rest of the team is Russian, American (2), French, German, Chinese, British and African.** ''VideoGame/PowerDolls'' (at least in the anime [=OVAs=]) has a sci-fi version of this trope: Despite the plot of the whole franchise taking place in a different planet from Earth, all the characters have a stated Earth ethnicity, as the characters are descendants from Earth colonists. Oddly enough, the main heroines, Fan and Yao, have ''Chinese'' ancestry and while there's a character with Japanese ancestry (Nami Takasu), she is basically a minor character. This is also subverted, as the topic of race is never mentioned in any context, other than the planet the characters come from.** ''Manga/YonaOfTheDawn'' takes place in the fantasy version of Korea, which is an [[UsefulNotes/KoreansInJapan achievement by itself]] taking into account the author is Japanese.** ''Anime/LittleWitchAcademia'' The main heroine Akko Kagari is the ''only thing'' linking this series with Japan, as the whole plot takes place in England.* The anime of ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'' is set in the author's hometown, Nishinomiya. Both the light novels and the anime describe the town in sufficient detail to make it obvious where it's set, but the animators turn this trope UpToEleven by [[RealPlaceBackground modeling every location in the anime after a real-life location in the town]].* A particularly bizarre one in the ''Free Fight'' manga: at one point the fight commentator goes off on a tangent about morality, mentioning [[CompensatedDating businessmen paying high school girls for sex]]. Except that the fight is taking place in the US.* ''Anime/KillLaKill'' is set for the most part in Japan, and when in the final episodes the Life Fibers' threat goes global, other world countries get a passing mention at best. The final battle is set in low Earth orbit, with Japan being the only country that can be seen from space after the Life Fibers cover the whole world.* Apparently subverted by the old anime ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muteking,_The_Dashing_Warrior Tondemo Senshi Muteking]]'', which is set in the US, more specifically in San Francisco, and takes a good deal of inspiration from American culture of the time (roller skating, cop shows, and so on). However, halfway through the series the main characters move to Japan and stay there for the remainder of the episodes.* ''Manga/BlackLagoon'': The manga is set in a fictional Thai city, with an extremely multicultural cast (one Japanese guy, one Chinese-American girl, two American guys, Russian, Chinese, Italian and South American mobsters...). The trope still shines through in an early arc where the heroes face a band of white neo-Nazis who display the kind of comedy behavior associated with JapaneseDelinquents (exagerated ManlyTears, etc.), and later, when the cast has to deal with the {{Yakuza}} in the "Fujiyama Gangsta's Paradise" arc.* ''Manga/LuckyStar'' and ''Manga/KOn''[='s=] animated adaptations have the characters go to Kyoto for a ClassTrip, with nice Kyoto {{Real Place Background}}s to give it that extra sense of flair, thanks to the locale of Creator/KyotoAnimation, the studio who did the adaptations. Gets particularly weird with ''K-On!'' specifically because some of the settings in the girls' hometown are also taken from Kyoto, despite the fact they have to travel to visit Kyoto, implying they ''don't'' live there.* Creator/PAWorks are ''very'' fond of setting their works in their native [[UsefulNotes/TheFortySevenPrefectures Toyama prefecture]], even those with aliens and fantasy monsters. Some of them get bonus points for [[RealPlaceBackground being set in their]] ''[[RealPlaceBackground hometown]]'', Johana/Nanto.** ''Anime/TrueTears'' is set in the town of Johana, where the studio was based until it was amalgamated with other nearby places into Nanto in 2004.** ''Anime/{{Kuromukuro}}'' is mainly set in [[AliensInCardiff Kurobe and Takayama]], but the prefecture seat and Nanto also get a chance to shine, and the [[AlienInvasion aliens even destroy the newly-built studio building]] in Nanto. ** Manoyama in ''Anime/SakuraQuest'' is quite openly based on Nanto, with its station being Johana station, and the woodcarving district being based on the same in Inami, another of Nanto constituents. [[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]* Franchise/TheDCU is particularly guilty of this:** Earth has, to date, had ''five'' well-known {{Green Lantern}}s -- which is remarkable in itself, since Green Lanterns represent huge sectors of space, not individual planets -- and ''all'' of them have been American males.** Although this is justified at least initially with Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner--Abin Sur had crashed in the US and told the ring to find the ''closest'' worthy person. He was in the US, so Hal and Guy were the two closest. Dennis [=O'Neil=] argued that the third Green Lantern, John Stewart, should be African-American on the grounds that it was ''extremely'' unlikely that out of the entire human race, the Green Lantern rings would choose two white American males in a row to represent Earth. Kilowog was an exception during his brief stay on Earth: he elected to move to the Soviet Union because his own civilization was closer to the communist way of thinking.** Every superpowered alien in the DC Universe - Superman, Martian Manhunter, Starfire, etc. - either chooses to live in the United States or ends up there by chance. ** ''ComicBook/SupermanRedSon'' averts this: through a mere chance of fate, Kal-El lands not in rural Kansas but on a kolkhoz in Ukraine, and grows up to fight not for "truth, justice and the American Way", but "Stalin, socialism and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact". While an interesting idea and attempt to explore and avert this trope, it also seems like it was simply an elaborate excuse to make a Stalin/"Man of Steel" pun.** The ComicBook/MartianManhunter has lately been written as a world traveler with multiple superhero identities in several countries, probably in recognition of this very problem. Almost all of this, of course, [[InformedAbility takes place off-camera]], but that's probably an artifact of CharacterFocus on the Justice League of ''America''.** There's also the ComicBook/JusticeLeagueInternational, though it's still headquartered in New York City. The JLI explicitly invokes this trope. Doctor Light (a heroine from Japan) actually states at one point that it's a political necessity that the Justice League have a more diverse, multicultural membership, as the global community is more likely to be accommodating toward a team of superheroes that does not solely consist of white Americans. ** There are also superhero teams outside the U.S., but they don't normally get their own series. For instance, there's the Great Ten in China. Or Japan's Super Young Team and Big Science Action.** UsefulNotes/{{The Silver Age|of Comic Books}} had "Batmen of many nations", but all of them were ''inspired'' by the American Franchise/{{Batman}}. This was reformed as Batman Inc in the 2000s, and actively did have numerous international BadassNormal heroes, many of which were bat-themed and often actively inspired by Batman, but most existing before coming into Bruce's fold. ** The 2007 ''Comicbook/CaptainCarrotAndHisAmazingZooCrew'' miniseries seems to assume that all of Earth-C's superheroes were in the United Species of America (Earth-C's United States of America), and thus subject to the American government's anti-superhero initiative (which included removing the non-Zoo Crew heroes' powers), with the President noting at one point that thanks to the law, there are "no other superheroes on Earth!" Apparently Cornada, Verminy, and Loondon (Earth-C's Canada, Germany, and London respectively, all places mentioned or shown in the original Zoo Crew series) were superhero-less... or that the other heroes simply moving to any of those places (and thus avoiding the law) wasn't an option...** Much worse in the ComicBook/BrightestDay event. Atrocitus uses his magic to divine the locations of the seven emotional entities. Two are captured by someone in Ysmault. The other five are in U.S. territory.* [[MarvelUniverse Marvel Comics]] is also guilty, as many of their heroes are based in New York. This has been lampshaded. Even ComicBook/{{Wolverine}}, who is from Canada and will kill you if you insult it, spends most of his time in the US. When this character started to get popular, several attempts were made to {{retcon}} him into [[HomegrownHero actually being American]]. Fortunately, none of these stuck.** One of their (once) most popular titles, ''Comicbook/{{Excalibur}}'', followed the national super-team of the UK. The X-Men lived in Australia for several years, too, but ''Excalibur'' was created by writer Creator/ChrisClaremont, who was born in Britain, and British artist Alan Davis. And the team in its original form consisted of two Britons, two Americans and a German.** This was lampshaded during the ''[[ComicBook/HouseOfM Decimation]]'' event when Henry Peter Gyrich remarked how, now that there are no mutants around any more, the US wins the superpower race by default since statistically, "happy accidents" (like the Comicbook/FantasticFour or Comicbook/TheIncredibleHulk) and scientific advancements (like ComicBook/CaptainAmerica) that lead to meta-humans being created occur more frequently in the US than anywhere else in the world.** Another exception: ComicBook/AlphaFlight, but that was created by Canadian artist and writer John Byrne.** Yet another: The ComicBook/{{Runaways}} bases are in Southern California. In fact, besides ComicBook/CloakAndDagger, none of the other heroes show up in the comic unless they're in New York themselves or [[spoiler:they're being apprehended by ComicBook/TheAvengers]].** Both Marvel and DC actually do assume that there are superhumans living all over the globe - in fact, both have had crossovers or miniseries that existed simply to introduce a lot of global heroes [[RememberTheNewGuy who were treated as characters that had always been there]], you just never saw them before - it's just brought up infrequently, so every now and then a completely unnecessary lampshade gets hung on it by a writer who doesn't realize that there are lots of characters they've never heard of and lots of writers before them who had the same idea.** Wolverine and the rest of the characters introduced in Giant Size X-Men #1 were intentionally designed to be a new group of mutants from around the world... they all just got recruited to go live in Westchester.** This was lampshaded during the ''ComicBook/CivilWar'' arc: at the height of the conflict, the Canadian characters in Alpha Flight were mocking all the angst going on among the American superheroes concerning the Registration Act by pointing out that other nations (including Canada) had something equivalent in place for years without having had either opponents, supporters, or the governments in question go as insane over the issue as the Americans currently were.** Banshee was even a member of "Mutants Without Borders", a charity organization that helps mutants in the third world. Of course, it was owned and run by the American X-Man Archangel.** This whole situation was {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in ''Comicbook/MightyAvengers''. The Blue Marvel is a black superhero from America who divides his time between the Avengers and helping out various other superheros across the globe, with the RunningGag being that whenever he mentions any of his non-American hero comrades, none of the Avengers have even the slightest idea of who the hell he is talking about.** Marvel has extra provincialism related to New York, the city where the company's headquartered. The Avengers Tower, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Punisher, all hail in\from the Big Apple, and the X-Men live upstate.* The ''ComicBook/SquadronSupreme'' limited series takes place on an Earth suffering from near-total collapse, yet the entire story takes place in the United States. This is especially jarring given that much of the story focuses on how the Squadron's efforts are impacting the rights of individuals, yet the laws and traditions of different countries are never addressed.* Prominent [[labelnote:*]](it sticks out like a sore thumb)[[/labelnote]] aversion in the case of Creator/EdwardGorey. Most of his illustrated novels were set in an ersatz [[TheEdwardianEra Edwardian England]] or an ersatz Europe of that era. Gorey himself never visited England, and rarely traveled outside his home state of Massachusetts.** Though Gorey's books (which are books, not comics) do sometimes play this straight, as stories like "The Willowdale Handcar" and "The Iron Tonic" are in an ersatz Edwardian version of the US (the former featuring town names that are amusing parodies to New Englanders like those from Gorey's home state) and he devoted an entire book, "The Lavender Leotard", to very obscure in-jokes about his obsession, the New York City Ballet and George Balanchine. (Gorey saw literally every ''performance'' for several seasons, and the book is basically observations that would only make sense to another NYCB balletomane.)* Averted in the Argentinian comic strip (and animated movie) ''ComicStrip/BoogieElAceitoso'': Despite the author being Argentinian, the titular character, Boogie, is a ''racist, white American hitman'' who hate (and kills) black people and Hispanics for fun, and most of his stories take place in the United States, or in few cases, in Central America during the many wars that happened there in the 80s, but ''never'' in Argentina. Even the author himself lampshaded the fact many times in many interviews about the topic.* Played straight and averted by ''ComicBook/MortadeloYFilemon'': There are plenty of stories set in other countries or as world trips ([[HollywoodGeography Not that they're accurate or anything]]), but quite a few have evil criminals, aliens or whatever that just happen to hide/go to Spain for no real reason. Best example? ''Expediente J''. The evil aliens send a few havoc-causing {{phlebotinum}} rocks to Spain (And accurately, around the area the main characters live at that) and when their leader appears at the end, he assumes that has caused ALL of humanity to be a mess. What?* Although Italian Disney artists occasionally point out that Duckburg is supposed to in North America, they tend to make the Disney characters take a particular interest in Italian history, Italian culture and Italian geography. Sometimes it's justified--you don't have to know much about tourism to realize that a restaurant with [[EiffelTowerEffect a view of the Leaning Tower of Pisa]] is a good investment (although you have to wonder how a busy financial tycoon like Scrooge [=McDuck=] can find the time to run the place himself). But it seems weird that [[OlderHeroVsYoungerVillain Scrooge and Rockerduck]] would drop everything to see who can be the first to build a bridge over the strait of Messina, Sicily. Or that WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse's nephews argue obsessively over who was Italy's best player in the soccer world championship 18 years ago.** Of course one of the major antagonists, Magica De Spell ''is'' an Italian (though [[Creator/CarlBarks her creator]] is American). * ''ComicBook/TheBeano'' is created by DC Thomson who are based in Dundee, Scotland, and their Scottish origins are often clear most notably in strips based around Scotland such as the [=McTickles=], Wee Ben Nevis and Red Rory of the Eagles.* Mexican comics tends to [[PlayingWithATrope playing with this trope]] ''a lot of times,'' since we see some stories that take place in Mexico and other titles in other countries or outside Earth. Some notable examples:** Most of the stories in ''ComicBook/{{Fantomas}}'' (the Mexican version, not the French one) take place overseas and a few times in Mexico too. The fact that the title character's nationality is unknown does help.** ''Comicbook/{{Kaliman}}'', another Mexican comic, also takes place worldwide along with Mexico sometimes. And the title character, Kalimán, hails from India and his young sidekick, Solin, is from Egypt.** The black-and-white comic, ''Samurai: John Barry'' averts this trope, since the whole series takes place in the Sengoku-era Japan (and sometimes in Europe) and all the characters are Japanese and Europeans, but we don't see a ''single Mexican character'' here.[[note]]Justified, due to the time period, since Mexico didn't exist as a country, but as an Spanish colony in that era.[[/note]]** The highly-controversial comic, (in the U.S., at least) ''Memin Pinguin'' takes place most of the time in Mexico, but some of the later [[StoryArc story arcs]] took place abroad, like in the United States and Africa.** ''Soul Keepers'', another Mexican comic, also avoids this trope: While some stories of the comic take place in Mexico, the [=titular=] characters, the Soul Keepers, are not Mexicans.* ''7 Prisoners'' is a French comic that takes place in a prison on the moon, housing hundreds of thousands of prisoners from all over the world. Naturally, three of the eponymous prisoners are French (four if you count the artificial lifeform created by two of the Frenchmen). And of the three Frenchmen, two committed crimes so they could go to the prison and find something, meaning they're just about the only inmates who aren't career criminals. Just saying.* ''ComicBook/{{Gen 13}}'' was Creator/{{Wildstorm}}'s flagship title for pretty much all of its 18 years, so it should come as no surprise that the team was primarily based in La Jolla, California, where Wildstorm's offices were located. This changed a handful of times as the book went on (for instance, one arc had the group living in Tokyo, and on various occasions they've gone on the run with no set base of operations), but everything goes back to La Jolla sooner or later.* The infamous ''ComicBook/NovasAventurasDeMegaman'', amongst its many changes, abruptly uproots the entire ''Videogame/MegaMan'' franchise and claims that it takes place in Brazil (and always has). It got even more blatant when one writer introduced a CreatorsPet character with strong nationalistic beliefs who ranted about how there need to be more comics about Brazilian characters; then it came to light that said writer planned for his character to [[SpotlightStealingSquad kill off the Mega Man characters and take over the comic]], which got him fired.* BelgianComics: Many Belgian comics take place in Brussels or a typical Flemish/Walloon village. ** ''ComicBook/SuskeEnWiske'': The main characters have time travelled a lot to periods in Flemish/Belgian history and have met many Flemish folklore characters. When the series caught on in the Netherlands the characters suddenly started using KLM airlines and travelling more to hot spots in the Netherlands. It got to the point that they even referred to themselves as Dutch in some stories. In "De Goalgetter" Suske become a soccer champion and joins the Dutch national team rather than the Belgian one. * ''ComicBook/HaagseHarry'': All action takes place in The Hague, The Netherlands, where all the characters also speak with the local accent of that city. * ''ComicBook/AlbedoErmaFelnaEDF'', just like ''VideoGame/PowerDolls'' above, is an sci-fi, alien version of this trope, albeit a somewhat contrived version of it: The titular heroine hails from a planet who is basically, taking into account the way how it is described in-universe, an alien, furry version of ''Japan'', since it shares similar customs and traditions. Her best friend Toki, on the other hand, is depicted as came out from the alien version of the Netherlands, or at least [[FreestateAmsterdam the stereotypical version of it]]. While there's an alien version of the U.S. (the Independent Lepine Republic), they are depicted as the ''bad guys'', mixed with tropes of the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Nazi Germany]]. Even more egregious the author is a former member of the USAF.** In a more meta-example of this trope, most of the animal species who appears in the story are descendant from American, European and Oceanian species and breeds, albeit some stock animals from African countries (hippos, lions, cheetahs, etc) also appears as well. There's almost ''no'' animals from Asian countries (like {{Tanuki}}s), albeit in some fanart the author has included some Asian breeds like the Japanese Shiba Inu breed. As a rule of thumb, Western species and breeds tends to appear more frequently in the story than non-Western ones.* Most of the characters in the MassiveMultiplayerCrossover ''ComicBook/TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen'' are based off English works, just as [[Creator/AlanMoore the writer]] and the artist are English. That's fine and dandy for the initial [[UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain Victorian]] setting, but it's quite jarring to see how few, say, American and Japanese references appear when the plot travels to 2009. The fact that famous English post-Victorian era characters like [[spoiler: Franchise/JamesBond and Franchise/HarryPotter]] receive no small amount of AdaptationalVillainy hasn't helped either.** This is averted however in the supplementary material, especially ''The New Traveller's Almanac'' which has references to Colombian, French, Russian literature and other obscurities. Later volumes also make heavy references to German playwright Creator/BertoltBrecht and Creator/JulesVerne (whose creations include Captain Nemo) is a French author. Likewise, ''The Nemo Trilogy'' makes references to Godzilla and GermanExpressionism. ** One reason why Moore plays this trope straight is that his books are about the darker aspects of culture and the way literary imaginations of certain places and events (such as how English people imagine African, Chinese and Indian writers) coloured real-life visions of these cultures. The motif of a ConstructedWorld AlternateUniverse based entirely on fictional depictions of the past is partially a commentary on the limits and virtues of the fictions various cultures dream up. * Most stories in ''ComicBook/WilqSuperbohater'' take place in Opole, which the authors' home town, and much effort was given to faithful depiction of locations and names around the town. On few occasions, Wilq visits Cracow, where the Minkiewicz brothers have been living since their study at the Academy of Fine Arts in the 1990s.* ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}'' takes place in Bretagne, France. The protagonists are Gauls (Frenchmen) who frequently visit other countries, where Obelix always dismisses the odd habits of local people as "crazy". Many jokes reference francophone culture and aren't always that easily translatable to other countries. * The original authors of ''ComicBook/{{WITCH}}'' set the series in a fictional American city but ended up making it look more like an European one, resulting in non-European fans [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield being unable to understand where Heatherfield is supposed to be]]. {{Averted}} with the animated adaptation, where Heatherfield is clearly shown as an American city.* ''ComicBook/{{The Vision 2015}}'' takes place almost entirely in a suburb of Washington, D.C., despite Vision working for the New York-based Avengers, because writer Tom King lives and works in Washington. [[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Works]]* A lot of fanfic writers will forget where book/movie/show/etc. is canonically set, placing it instead in their home country. See the "Fanfiction" folder in [[WeAllLiveInAmerica we all live in the US]] for more.* Among its other alterations to canon, ''Fanfic/LightAndDarkTheAdventuresOfDarkYagami'' immediately establishes the story as being in the US rather than in Japan when Light notices that a car cannot be American because it does not have the wheel on the same side.* [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4077485/1/Minstrel_Show This fic]] looks at the reasons for this trope's use in the the Michael Bay ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' films, by asking why there are differences at all. "White American male" is seen as the dominant subculture, but in this case it's still a conscious choice--and, sadly, probably the right one, because it's the one that most people are subconsciously more likely to accept.* Most ''Series/{{Neighbours}}'' fanfics are set in the fictional suburb of UsefulNotes/{{Melbourne}} that the show itself is set in. Jack Rudd's fic ''When Winter Shows Her Hand'' is set in the mostly obscure English town of Yeovil. Guess which town Jack Rudd grew up in.* ''Fanfic/MyImmortal'' does this constantly. For starters, Hot Topic doesn't even have a branch in the UK, or at the very least never calls that branch "Hot Topic". Every band mentioned is ''very'' American, and it is considered notable that [[Franchise/HarryPotter Harry]]/Vampire has an English accent (not even bothering to tell us what ''kind'' of English accent). The entire "prep" subculture is American, the closest UK equivalent to "preps" being "sloanes", more or less. Of course, there's also the fact that [[AnachronismStew the timescale is messed up too.]]* HoylesRulesOfDragonPoker: The game, purportedly from another dimension, has an awful lot of references to US/British media.* Almost no modern day ''Disney/{{Frozen}}'' [=AUs=] take place in Norway. America is the default by far. Occasionally you will get a reference that they are of Norwegian descendance or were born in Norway but it's rare. Even their {{fanon}} surnames are very un-Norwegian.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]* The overwhelming majority of films in the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon take place in either North America or Europe. Also, ''Disney/OneHundredAndOneDalmatians'' is the only European-set film to take place in ThePresentDay. When it comes to specific identifiable countries, the ones most frequently depicted are, by a huge margin, {{the United States}} and Great {{Britain}}. France, [[Disney/{{Cinderella}} which]] [[Disney/TheAristocats has]] [[Disney/BeautyAndTheBeast four]] [[Disney/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame films]], is in a distant third place.* Lampshaded in ''WesternAnimation/TheBookOfLife'', with light-hearted jokes and references to Mexico as the center of the universe. Even the ''country'' itself has a moustache. [[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]* In ''Film/IndependenceDay'', it's the Americans who first detect the aliens, figure out how to beat them and organize a counterattack. Other countries got a little rankled from a scene in which a British military officer receives a message from the US and says, "It's about bloody time," which many viewers took to meaning that other countries were just sitting around waiting for the US to take the lead. The infamous presidential speech where the American president says that the Fourth of July will now be a universal day of independence, rather than only the American one, also irks many people outside the USA. Film director Roland Emmerich intended the speech as a call to universal brotherhood, but to many non-Americans it sounds more like a call for {{Americanization}}.* 90% of all ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' (and Godzilla-related) movies takes place in Japan, (sole exceptions being ''Film/GodzillaFinalWars'' and ''Film/DestroyAllMonsters'', and of course the American versions in [[Film/{{Godzilla 1998}} 1998]] and [[Film/{{Godzilla 2014}} 2014]]) making giant monsters look less like a "World Problem" and more of a "Japanese Problem". We never have any idea if giant monsters are a problem elsewhere in the world, nor do we EVER get an "in-universe" reason why Japan is so plagued by Giant Monsters.** Actually subverted. Most of the anti-kaiju are built by the U.N. Examples include the 1993 [[HumongousMecha Mechagodzilla]], and [[ThisIsADrill MOGUERA]] as well as the [[CoolPlane Super X III.]] The 1984 Godzilla movie explicitly included a plot point of Japan, the US and the USSR all teaming up to stop Godzilla. One scene even shows a Russian officer trying to prevent a nuclear launch. (This scene was edited in U.S. releases to the Russians deliberately launching the warhead.)** Also mentioned that Japan is Godzilla's natural homeland and {{Lampshaded}} in GMK for different reasons.** Most enemy kaiju head to Japan to kill Godzilla so the rest of the world can be taken over. ** This is {{Lampshade}}d in the TV show ''Series/KanpaiSenshiAfterV''. The Yellow Warrior angrily points out that {{Kaiju}} monsters are supposedly a massive threat to the entire world, and yet they only ever seem to attack Japan. The Pink Warrior then asks why monsters never seem to attack America, which is much larger than Japan and is also a global superpower. * Played straight and lampshaded in ''Film/{{District 9}}''. One of the talking-heads in the {{Mockumentary}} section specifically says when aliens landed on Earth, they 'did not land in New York' as they do in most Hollywood blockbusters. Instead they land in South Africa, the country of origin for most of the cast and crew.* In ''Film/HustleAndFlow'', the phrase "Fuck with me" is used not to mean "Mess around" or "be a jerk to", but a colloquial "hear out my business proposition", which is only interpreted as such in Memphis, according to director Craig Brewer.* Every movie by Creator/JohnWaters is set in Baltimore.* There were very strong ties between Creator/MNightShyamalan and Pennsylvania in his earlier films.* Actor Vince Vaughn tends to use his weight as a box office draw to get his films set in his hometown of Chicago. There have been a few exceptions, but he usually gets his way.* ''Film/TheManWhoSavesTheWorld'': "Two Turkish pilots and some other people went off to battle."* MaskedLuchador films (e.g., ElSanto's ''Film/SantoContraLaInvasionDeLosMarcianos'') generally treat Mexico as the most important city in the world. Whenever aliens invade the Earth, they invariably land near Mexico City.* ToddSolondz's movies are almost always in New Jersey, but he doesn't seem to LIKE New Jersey, judging from the movies.* All of the TV shows and films in Creator/KevinSmith's Film/TheViewAskewniverse are set in his hometown of Monmouth County, New Jersey.* The majority of Creator/GeorgeARomero's films have been either set or filmed in [[UsefulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}} Western Pennsylvania.]]* A lot of Creator/RichardLinklater's films take place in or have shot in Texas.* Almost all of Creator/WoodyAllen's films take place in New York City or feature New Yorkers. His recent films set in UsefulNotes/{{London}} (where he has made 4 films), UsefulNotes/{{Barcelona}}, UsefulNotes/{{Paris}}, Southern France, UsefulNotes/{{Rome}} are exceptions (mostly because the city has become very expensive to make films in) as is Film/BlueJasmine which is mostly set in UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco. Another film (''Irrational Man'') is set in Rhode Island. * Writer/director Shane Meadows sets almost all of his films in UsefulNotes/TheMidlands of England, where he is from.* The Farrelly brothers frequently set their films in Rhode Island (where they grew up) or elsewhere in New England.* Practically all of Creator/JohnHughes's movies are set in Illinois, typically either ''in'' Chicago, or in a fictional city or suburb damn ''close'' to Chicago.* The Creator/CoenBrothers' ''{{Film/Fargo}}'' is a love letter to rural Minnesota - Joel and Ethan grew up in St. Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis.* ''Film/ASeriousMan'' takes place in suburban Minneapolis around the time the Coens were kids.* ''Film/TheNovemberMan'': By the end of the movie, [[spoiler:Mira]] breaks the big story about [[spoiler: Hanley and Federov's]] schemes to the world news -- which apparently means the New York Times, and none of the other major world news networks. And she's not even an US national.* Director Creator/PeterJackson is famous for filming all his movies in New Zealand, even stories set in the US (and especially, of course, Middle Earth). While Jackson traveled to New York City before filming ''Film/KingKong2005'' and visited the Empire State Building, the entire movie itself was filmed in New Zealand. The only times he's ever left New Zealand and filmed elsewhere has been some filming in Pennsylvania he did for ''Film/TheLovelyBones'' and filming Creator/ChristopherLee and Creator/IanHolm's scenes at Pinewood in London in ''Film/TheHobbit'', as the health of both actors was too frail for them to travel to Wellington.* Creator/ShaneBlack usually sets his movies in Los Angeles (both written, such as ''Film/LethalWeapon'' and ''Film/TheLastBoyScout'', and directed, including ''Film/KissKissBangBang'' and ''Film/TheNiceGuys''), where he's lived since high school. One of the few aversions, ''Film/TheLongKissGoodnight'', still fits for opening in Black's home state of Pennsylvania.* While Comicbook/IronMan is based on New York in the comics, [[Film/IronMan the movies]] place him in California instead - from the headquarters of Marvel Comics (see the folder above) to one of [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse Marvel Studios]].[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]* In K.A. Applegate's ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'', it's not really made clear what's going on outside the States during the entirety of the war. We know that at least one major head of state outside the U.S. is a Controller (the President of the U.S. isn't, though), but except for, like, four missions outside the country, the kids mostly ignore everything beyond U.S. borders. Or more than a day's journey from their home town, for that matter. In this case, the trope is justified, since a group of kids too young to drive would have no way to leave their town, much less their country, without alerting adults to their secret mission.* One of the oldest ones in the book - Creator/HGWells' ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds''. With a whole planet to invade, the Martians pick north UsefulNotes/{{London}}. Mostly justified, as it was the capital of the world's biggest superpower of the time. Wells, however, freely enjoys letting the Martians destroy specific places where he spent an unhappy childhood.* Brian Jacques, the author of the ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'' series, is a born-and-bred Liverpooler. His multitude of jobs have led him through a multitude of Western English countrysides, and he (self-admittedly) shows off these anglicisms throughout the setting of his books and their characters (complete with [[UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} Highlanders]], [[UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry Somerset natives]] and [[OopNorth West-coast seafarers]]). [[FantasyCounterpartCulture In all but name, actually]].* The ''Literature/AnitaBlake'' books place St Louis at their center. * Apart from three scenes, ''Literature/ShamanOfTheUndead'' takes place solely in Wrocław, and it sometimes looks as if there are no wizards outside Poland.* Creator/StephenKing sets the majority of his stories in his native Maine (see ''LovecraftCountry''), and more specifically the town of Derry, with seven books set in the town and an additional ''seventeen'' referencing the town by name. And when he started spending part of the year in Florida, he started setting some of his stories there. Several books were set in or around Boulder, Colorado, when he lived in Colorado for a while. And all of them are set in the U.S. (except the ones set in fantasy worlds) and his entire body of work has only three notable non-American characters, the British-born Richard Straker in ''Literature/SalemsLot'', the English Nick Hopewell in ''Literature/TheLangoliers'' and the German Kurt Dussander in ''Apt Pupil'' (the latter is because a Nazi concentration camp commander can't be American).** ''Literature/BagOfBones'' seems almost GenreSavvy - it starts out by pretending it's going to be set in New York, but then the main character moves to Maine.** Even the books set in fantasy worlds are strongly implied if not outright stated to actually be set in the parallel world versions of the United States. * A memorable quote from ''Literature/TheButcherBoy'': "It'd be a sad day for this town if the world ended."* ''Literature/{{Narnia}}'' proper has a lot of English culture (possibly due to the first King and Queen of Narnia being a London cabbie and his wife), even among the Talking Animals, and English food -- even animals that should be vegetarian will cook and eat fish or bacon. Creator/CSLewis also depicts Middle Eastern food in Calormen. He makes it clear that the homesick Narnians think it's distasteful foreign muck -- or at least gives the impression of being nothing but dessert courses -- but points out that "[[NoFourthWall You might not have liked it,]] but Shasta did." Shasta grew up in Calormen. [[ValuesDissonance The books were written before Middle Eastern food became popular in the UK.]]* In the ''Literature/{{Dragaera}}'' books, the Eastern Kingdoms are heavily based on Hungary. Author Steven Brust has Hungarian ancestry.* ''Literature/HarryPotter''** In ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows Deathly Hallows]]'', Voldemort conquers all of wizarding Britain, which is essentially treated as though it were the same thing as conquering the whole world. Not to mention the fact that throughout the series Voldemort fights a war to TakeOverTheWorld in which practically everyone on both sides is British (a few foreign wizards on Voldemort's side notwithstanding). Australia is assumed to be safe, since Hermione sent her parents there. We can only guess whether Britain is the wizarding world's superpower and/or still rules over the Wizarding British Empire, or Voldemort taking over Britain is a prelude to a bid for WorldDomination, or that the only reason it's bad is because the heroes live in Britain. ** Also, the vast majority of creatures in ''Literature/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'' are native to the British Isles, and some are specifically described as unique to a particular county, isle, or forest. Meanwhile, beasts native to other continents are seldom given a more specific home range than "China", "Peru", or even "Africa". Possibly an in-character example, if Rowling deliberately imposed this trope on Newt Scamander. The foreword explains that the list in the book is not comprehensive, and Scamander is writing for British wizards, so it's reasonable for him to show provincialism in this case.** ''Literature/QuidditchThroughTheAges'' notes that there are dozens of teams from other places such as the US and South America and these wizards are never referenced in the books ever. Apparently during the whole series they decided it wasn't really that important to butt in. And not to mention ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire Goblet of Fire]]'' introduces two other wizarding schools in France and Bulgaria with equal prestige to Hogwarts and they only receive minor references in the rest of the series.** Also somewhat {{Lampshaded}} in ''Goblet'', when Harry realizes how stupid he was for not realizing there must be wizards in other countries too.** Before Voldemort, the dark wizard Grindelwald was incredibly feared. His influence didn't seem to have reached England though, and the most impact his reign seemed to have was his defeat being a bit of trivia on the back of Dumbledore's Chocolate Frog card. It's inverted in the seventh book, where Krum's reaction to Grindelwald's sign (actually the symbol of the Deathly Hallows) indicate that wizards in his home country Bulgaria still remember all too well the damage done by Grindelwald (he says Grindelwald murdered his grandfather), to the point where students who draw the symbol on walls as a joke tend to get beaten up by the descendants of Grindelwald's victims.** Although with Grindelwald, it could be due to Voldemort's greater extremism (and Rowling herself said that his downfall being in 1945 was intentionally done, drawing parallels between him and the Nazis.)** Even within a British context, ''Harry Potter'' is very provincial. Aside from the undisclosed location in Scotland where Hogwarts is located, virtually all the important places in the story are in the extreme south of England. Harry lives in Surrey, Ron lives in Devon, and Malfoy lives in Wiltshire. The first third of ''Deathly Hallows'' takes Harry from Surrey to Devon, then to London for a couple chapters, a few chapters in nondescript woodland, and then to a fictional West Country village, then to the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, then back to Devon, then to Wiltshire, and finally to Shell Cottage, in Cornwall, before finally going to Gringotts in London, and then Hogwarts. For those keeping track, 95% of their England-spanning journey takes place in the West Country. J.K. Rowling grew up in the area.** There's finally an attempt at expanding the wizarding world with the ''Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'' movie, set in 1920s New York City... [[CaliforniaDoubling even if it was filmed in England]] [[FakeNationality and starring predominantly British actors.]]** Pointed out by Harry when he discovers that Voldemort has created six Horcruxes and hidden them to ensure his immortality. Harry immediately remarks the Horcruxes could be hidden anywhere in the world for all they know, and would be impossible to ever find. As it turns out, none of them were outside the United Kingdom. Only one of them was even outside of ''England.'' * It's implied in ''Literature/TheHungerGames'' series that the people of Panem represents the entire human race, since no other country other than Panem is mentioned in the narration. Panem itself is located in a severely reduced North American continent.* The Literature/{{Discworld}} is vast and large, but Terry Pratchett's British outlook is comes through very clearly. {{Fantasy Counterpart Culture}}s are depicted based on British attitudes to their real-world inspirations.* Used in-universe in the ''Literature/CiaphasCain'' novels. The editor of Cain's memoirs has to insert text from other works to give the readers the big picture, often lamenting on how Cain always focuses only on events affecting himself.* A disproportionate number of gay-themed romances take place in California or New England. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Iowa But perhaps more will be set in the Midwest now.]]* Creator/RobertAHeinlein was so terrified of doing this that he only set his novels in places that he had personally visited, or were completely made up. He did write a bit about Mars, but his depictions thereof probably fall into the last category.* In the illustrated children's books ''Barbapapa'', when the titular character returns from a space travel looking for a partner, we are shown Europe with only one point of reference: the Eiffel Tower. Three guesses where the author lived...---> '''Harry:''' All my stuff is there.* In ''Literature/TheDarkIsRising'' everything important in the grand struggle for world dominion between good and evil apparently occurs in Great Britain (Ireland doesn't even come into it), specifically in three tiny villages in Cornwall, Buckinghamshire and Wales; even Scotland is only mentioned in two sentences over a five book series. The U.S. is totally irrelevant except that (1) one of the main characters has an uncle who emigrated there and (2) the U.S. sends backs its share of magically clueless tourists to the U.K. (represented by the aforementioned uncle's American wife). Lastly, while there are Old Ones (the race of magical servants of the Light/good wizards) all over the world, the ones in countries other than the U.K. don't ''do'' anything except show up as part of a crowd in visions that our British Old One hero occasionally has, and one Jamaican Old One posts a magical MacGuffin back to our hero in England. Rome is mentioned, but only in relation to the Roman invasion of Britain, and India is only relevant because there's one scene in the last novel where one of the heroes defends a British Indian child (the son of immigrant parents) from some bullies.* The most commonly used flume on the Earth territories in ''Literature/ThePendragonAdventure'' is in [[BigApplesauce The Bronx]], a quick drive away from the main character's hometown of Stony Brook, New York. [[spoiler: The other was created during the series, and it is in Stony Brook, itself.]] The author, D.J. [=MacHale=], was born there. This is later [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in the tenth book. [[spoiler: [[BigBad Saint Dane]] created the flumes, and the Travelers were created in order to combat him. It made sense to put them in places were they had easy access to a flume.]]* The works of Creator/RobertRankin see myriad supernatural disasters threaten the world, most of which are centred on the London borough of Brentford, also notable as the area in which one Robert Rankin spent his childhood.* ''Literature/NightWatch'' is a lot like the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' series. While magical persons are not restricted to the author's homeland (in this case Russia), everything important happens there, and while Geser and Zabulon are literally only the heads of the Light and Dark Others of Moscow, in practice, they function as the leaders of Light and Darkness in general.* According to Creator/JodiPicoult, New England is full of [[Literature/MySistersKeeper sick]] or neglected children, {{Knight Templar Parent}}s and various [[Literature/ThePact lonely]] [[Literature/VanishingActs lawyers with dysfunctional backgrounds.]] Picoult was born on Long Island, NY and now lives in New Hampshire.* ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'', despite revolving around Greek gods, is set in the modern US. The farthest place away from the US that the series shows is when Percy dreams of seeing Rachel spelling messages in a nondescript [[WelcomeToTheCaribbeanMon Caribbean beach]] (her family is vacationing there). [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in the first book, where Percy is told that the Greek gods relocate to whoever happens to be the current Western powerhouse at the moment. ** Thankfully averted in its sequel series, ''Literature/TheHeroesOfOlympus''. The first book sees the heroes travel to [[UsefulNotes/{{Quebec}} Quebec City]] while the second makes UsefulNotes/{{Alaska}} the destination of the adventure with a brief stop at UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}}, not to mention introducing a Canadian and a Puerto Rican as main characters. Then there's the third book and beyond, which sees a voyage to UsefulNotes/{{Greece}}, which means plenty of pitstops including: UsefulNotes/{{Italy}}, UsefulNotes/{{Croatia}}, UsefulNotes/{{Malta}}, and UsefulNotes/{{Portugal}}. The aforementioned Caribbean is also finally explored when UsefulNotes/PuertoRico is visited in the final book.** Sister series ''Literature/TheKaneChronicles'' seems to follow in THO's footsteps, as it breaks the provincialism from day one: the first book opens in UsefulNotes/{{London}}, the second has the heroes visit [[UsefulNotes/TheCityFormerlyKnownAs Saint Petersburg]] and UsefulNotes/{{Egypt}}, while the final book, with the exception of the prologue and epilogue, takes place entirely in Egypt, which to the present day still acts as the capital of the Egyptian gods, unlike the Greeks. Oh, and Sadie is British too, and this fact is even reflected in her narration, which uses British English. ** However, the other sister series, ''Literature/MagnusChaseAndTheGodsOfAsgard'' seems to have fallen back to this trope, as it's said that UsefulNotes/{{Boston}}, due to a peculiar history with the Vikings, is the word-to-word ''Hub of the universe'', or rather, the Nine Worlds. The human main characters also fall into this, as both Magnus and Sam are both (Bostonian) Americans. Although, this is not as obvious as the PJTO series by virtue of not playing Boston highly at all; most of the events happen in other worlds parallel to Boston, probably because [[LateArrivalSpoiler Magnus is dead]]. * ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' may seem to suffer from this; for the first six books of the series or so, it seems like UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} is the site of all the supernatural threats and disasters in the country, and every major supernatural power in the world has a vacation home or bunker there. Then the seventh book reveals that Harry and the reader was almost completely oblivious to a major SecretWar (that ''started'' in Chicago, but anyways...) and some very important action has been happening on other continents. Additionally, the strongest of factions are noted for having a presence everywhere, Chicago simply being the place that Harry Dresden has "jurisdiction" over, and Harry ends up leaving the area for important, climactic battles at least a couple times in later books. Also, it's explicitly noted in the books that Chicago (and the Lake Michigan area generally) ''are'' supernaturally unusual, the area is thick with ley-lines and strange things that were present from time immemorial, and furthermore, the role of Chicago as a global 'cross-roads' as amplified the effect. Ironically, series creator Jim Butcher never visited Chicago until he finished the first book. He lives in a suburb of UsefulNotes/KansasCity.* Another Chicago example would be the ''Literature/{{Divergent}}'' series. Forget the world, forget the U.S., forget even the freaking Midwest. The series ''never ever'' steps outside of Chicago City as defined today (i.e. most of Cook County and a sliver of [=DuPage=] County to house the O'Hare airport), even though the series is set in a distant future. Of course, [[ExactWords that's provincialism in location only]]. If we go by characters, there a handful who's explicitly stated ''not'' to be a Chicagoan: Nita, who came from [[UsefulNotes/{{Indianapolis}} Indy]] and [[spoiler: Natalie Prior, and thus her children Tris and Caleb]], who are [[UsefulNotes/{{Milwaukee}} Milwaukeeans]].* A subtle example: The ''Literature/MaridAudran'' novels by George Alec Effinger are cyberpunk books with an unusual Arabic setting; most of the action takes place in the Levant. However, the books' main metropolis, the Budayeen, and its inhabitants, are patterned after the French Quarter of UsefulNotes/NewOrleans, where Effinger lived. It's particularly clear in the characters' dialect, which will be familiar to New Orleanians or fans of ''Literature/AConfederacyOfDunces''.* ''Literature/SkulduggeryPleasant'' takes place in Ireland. Mostly around Dublin. It is apparently the "birthplace" of magic, and impliedly has more magical artifacts, happenings, and general weird stuff happening than any place else on Earth. Many nations would like to gain control of it, with [[{{Eagleland}} the US]] usually mentioned.* The Nuala Anne [=McGrail=] novels start in Ireland (Nuala is a somewhat psychic woman from there, by ancestry) and move to Chicago. They were written by an Irish-American priest who lives in Chicago.* In ''Literature/{{Xanth}}'', the FantasyWorldMap is in the shape of Florida, where Creator/PiersAnthony lives.** Began to be averted later in the series when the connection to "[[RealLife Mundania]]" has shifted variously to Korea and Italy (notably during the Punic Wars), and it's shown that [[{{Muggles}} Mundanes]] who enter Xanth will perceive it as being the same shape as whichever peninsula they entered from. It's still '''usually''' Florida, though. Anyone from the modern era who enters Xanth will by definition do so from Florida.* All of the central characters of the ''Literature/MediochreQSethSeries'' live in Edinburgh, Scotland (although, interestingly, ''none'' of them have lived there all their life). The author is Scottish and grew up in Edinburgh. {{Lampshaded}} in the About the Author section of the first book.* ''Literature/TenSixtySixAndAllThat'' is simultaneously a history of England and a spoof of “history” as taught in English schools. As such, the book says that (East) Indian History began in the 18th century, and that the American Revolution (led by Literature/DickWhittington) "prevented America from having any more History."* Most of Creator/MegCabot's books either take place in New York, where she lives, or Indiana, where she grew up.* Most of ''Literature/TheHouseOfNight'' series takes place in Tulsa, which is where the authors live. This becomes a bit silly when it's implied in one book that of all the House of Nights all around the world, including various famous historic sites in Europe, Aphrodite's socially-conscious ladder-climbing parents consider it far more prestigious for her to attend the House of Night in Tulsa.* ''Literature/MythAdventures'': The series takes place on several dimensions, none of which are Earth, but all the pop-culture references are from 20th century America.** The same is true for the game based on the books. See Fan Works.* ''Literature/TheGenesisOfJennyEverywhere'' manages to combine both this ''and'' WhereTheHellIsSpringfield with the heroine's hometown of Levendale City- clearly as English as it possibly can be, with a few minor dialect hints suggesting it's the [[NorthEastEngland north-east bit]]. Based loosely on [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Leven,_North_Yorkshire the River Leven (a tributary of the Tees)]] near where [[Tropers/TheLyniezian the author]] lives (there's even [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levendale a real Levendale]], but it's just a small suburb) and a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leven,_East_Riding_of_Yorkshire village in the East Riding of Yorkshire]] he visited as a kid.* Creator/KerstinPflieger does this with her fantasy novels - apparently, the most important vampire village is somewhere in the Black Forest, and the device that prevents humans from being overrun by supernatural creatures is located in Heidelberg. The organisation that researches paranormal activity operates in different German cities, but no mention is made of other countries in Europe. However, as Germans read lots of translated American novels, this doesn't lead to the question why the supernatural never happens elsewhere, but rather to a kind of satisfaction that, after all, supernatural things can happen in Germany, too.* Extreme example in ''Literature/TheChemicalGardenTrilogy''; everywhere except America has been destroyed offstage. [[spoiler:''Sever'' suggests this might not be entirely true, though]].* ''Literature/HorribleHistories'': Many volumes discuss historical time periods from a British perspective, like the Saxons, the Tudors, the Stuarts and the Georgians. When pupils are depicted they always wear the mandatory school uniforms as is custom in the British Educational System. * A good portion of Colleen [=McCullough=]'s books are set in her native Australia.* Every Creator/NicholasSparks book (and the vast majority of the subsequent movies) is set in North Carolina, where he's from.* Author Erich Segal set many of his books in Brooklyn (specifically, the neighborhood of Midwood), where he grew up, and/or Harvard University, where he went to college.* ''Literature/{{Jam}}'', by [[Creator/BenCroshaw Yahtzee Croshaw]] takes place in Brisbane, Australia, which was (and is, as of 2015) his place of residence.* ''Creator/MaeveBinchy'' set all but one of her books in her native Ireland. And the one that wasn't--''Nights Of Rain And Stars''--still featured a cast of Irish people.* Up until the third book, ''Literature/TheMortalInstruments'' series takes place exclusively in New York City, and all of the main characters, with the exception of Magnus, are New Yorkers too. The third book, ''City of Glass'', finally averts this as it introduces Idris, a fictional European country sandwiched between France, Germany, and Switzerland, and the homeworld of the Shadowhunters. However, most of the (main) series alternates only between these two locations, up until Los Angeles is seen, if only briefly, in ''City of Heavenly Fire''.** Its prequel series, ''Literature/TheInfernalDevices'', completely averts this. Even though the main protagonist is an American, the entire series is set in the United Kingdom, and her new friends (and villains) are therefore British. It also doesn't go through SmallReferencePools by only showing [[BritainIsOnlyLondon London]] either, as it actually shows a bit more pieces of land, including, believe it or not, UsefulNotes/{{Wales}}! * The Bookworld as depicted in the ''Literature/ThursdayNext'' series is not only the English language part (areas in other languages are only briefly mentioned), but practically all of the characters, books and tropes depicted are limited to England specifically, with very few references to American authors and books, let alone works not originally in English (only ''Literature/WarAndPeace'' and ''Literature/TheTrial'' are shown explicitly).* With the exception of the novella ''The Devil Delivered'', all of Creator/StevenErikson's non-fantasy fiction is set in Canada, where he is from.* Whenever the action takes place on Earth in Literature/{{Honorverse}}, it's invariably in Chicago, where one of the series coauthors, Creator/EricFlint, lives. [[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]* In ''Series/DoctorWho'', Britain and parts thereof are generally the centre of the universe--particularly [[BritainIsOnlyLondon London]] and UsefulNotes/TheMidlands. In the classic series, there were just six stories set in North America or Asia. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E3PyramidsOfMars An Egyptian themed 4th Doctor story]] still took place in the UK.** Lampshaded in "Fury From the Deep", a Patrick Troughton story, which opened with a funny sequence of Victoria griping that the TARDIS always seems to end up on Earth, and Jamie (a Scot) griping that it always ends up in ''England''.** Lampshaded via the acting in "Robot", which hinges on the ridiculous premise that America, Russia and China have all given their nuclear missile codes to British politicians as part of a disarmament treaty. The Doctor's response is "Well, naturally, the others were all foreigners", complete with a subtle [[AsideGlance eyeroll to camera]], as if he knows that Britain is the centre of the universe in this world. The Brigadier quickly responds "Exactly," and then pauses, looking puzzled, as if he's surprised the Doctor is even accepting this bullshit.*** This seems to be more a case of the Doctor lampshading the attitude in the Brigadier. The Brigadier, without a hint of irony, states that "Naturally, the only country that could be trusted with such a role was Great Britain" and seems to think that the Doctor's agreeing with him, then realises a moment later that the Doctor's actually taking the mick.** "Voyage of the Damned" features him wincing when he discovers where the ship may end up crashing: [[spoiler:Buckingham Palace]]. And as the climax of "Journey's End" has, [[spoiler:his reaction to Earth being the last planet sent--and the one that didn't get sent back with the other easier alien planet-theft device--was 'Guess which one it is?'.]]** Space travel is overwhelmingly British in ''Doctor Who''. One of the few exceptions is "The Waters of Mars": the base is a realistic mix of nationalities, with the majority being American, but also including a Pakistani, a German, and a Australian...and, naturally, one of the few British residents is the commander.** The resident BadassCrew UNIT is, despite supposedly being an international coalition, seemingly 95% British. Might this be a case of episodes being set in Britain, in the US 95% of UNIT might be American. In the Third Doctor era it was described as a UN agency with cover as a counter-terrorism force, the Brigadier's superior was not British, and one of the novels referred to a UNIT SAC (Supreme Allied Commander), but the national contingents could be freely withdrawn from UNIT command.** Then there's the Temporal CreatorProvincialism: a decent percentage of RTD era stories take place not just in Britain, but modern day Britain; generally understood as [[NextSundayAD about a year ahead of the current year.]] Notable for a show about TimeTravel.** Since the growth of the show's popularity in America, more episodes have been set there to pander to that base. However, almost all of the cast has still been British.*** Out of the shows set in the U.S., most of them are in the sort of places you would expect from SmallReferencePools: New York City, Washington, and TheWildWest. And then there was an episode as well as an ''entire season'' revolving around events that happened in Utah (a place rarely mentioned on American TV shows).*** Perpugilliam "Peri" Brown, companion to the Fifth and Sixth Doctors, was an eighteen year-old American botany student holidaying (vacationing) in Lanzarote with her step-father. She was played by British actress Nicola Bryant, and her lack of American experience would have her use words such as "lift" instead of "elevator". A clear case of [[FakeNationality Fake Nationality]].** Lampshaded and justified in the ''Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine'' short story "Useless Things", which explains that standard operating procedure for alien invasions is to start out in a rural area on a small island, move to the capital once you've established a beachhead, and then move on to countries that take up a sizable proportion of the globe from there.* Lampshaded in ''Series/StargateSG1''. When the US finally decides to let the wider world in on what's been going on, many of the other world leaders are incredulous at America's arrogance in taking unilateral action that affects the entire world. And when the Air Force suggests that a multi-national Stargate effort should be headed by America, most of them balk outright.** The US isn't the only country mentioned, international cooperation is a concern and characters object to Stargate Command's AmericaSavesTheDay mentality... but on the show, the US is still in charge. Canada is a nearly silent partner just because they're in NORAD and the SGC shares its base with NORAD, but they're never shown in any leadership role. Russia involved itself in interstellar travel and usually is as effective as a RedShirtArmy. Both the civilian and military leaders of the international expedition to Atlantis are Americans.** Canada's representative in NORAD was a minor character (he was present for a few pages) in the SG-1 novel ''First Amendment.'' The few things he says about Canada are completely wrong, reflecting the author's lack of knowledge.*** For added fun, [[{{Irony}} note that the show is filmed in]] [[CanadaEh Vancouver]].* In ''Franchise/StarTrek'', the warp drive, the semi-sentient computer, and the transporter were all invented by Americans. This is rarely mentioned directly in the series; racist and nationalist attitudes are artifacts of the past--and often ridiculed--by the time of the original series, let alone ''The Next Generation'' and beyond. But in ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', which takes place a good hundred years before the original series (and was made more recently, in a less idealistic time), Reed, who is British, laments that if some of those discoveries had been made by Brits, Earth probably wouldn't be held in check by the Vulcans as much as they are. Trip, the nice Southern engineer, claims that Americans have done most of the heavy lifting regarding technology, a common, if inaccurate, American conceit.** Which is ironic, as the character of Scotty was made...[[ShapedLikeItself Scottish]]....precisely because of the reputation Scots had at the time as inventors and engineers. ** It should be noted that at least one Enterprise executive was influenced by a series of essays by Sal Lagonia that suggested the Federation was likely formed from the victorious powers from WW3 - I.E. The Americans and English, and therefore the Anglo-Amercancentrism may have been intentional.** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise's'' title sequence is biased towards American space and aviation achievements. The Russians (or even the German V2 rocket and the British jet engine for that matter) seem to have been ignored. One interviewer took the question to the show's story editor, which explains ''everything'' about why this happened:--->Trek Brasilis: Talking about NASA, don't you think some scenes like UsefulNotes/YuriGagarin, Mir Space Station or Sputnik are missing from the opening sequence?--->André Bormanis: [[DiggingYourselfDeeper It would've been nice to see something from the old Soviet program, which provided so much of the impetus for the American space program]].*** This even happens ''in universe'' in an episode of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' when American captain Kathryn Janeway informs American officer Tom Paris that he's the latest in a line of pioneers including Orville Wright, Neil Armstrong and Zefram Cochrane. Made especially egregious by the fact that Armstrong is blatantly the odd man out among a list of pioneers of new modes of travel (he was a pioneer of exploration) and it should be Yuri Gagarin.*** In the ''Enterprise'' episode "Zero Hour", the villains (a group of alien Nazis) are revealed to have invaded the majority of America, and are currently making a final push across the country. A map in their headquarters shows that their "invasion" inexplicably stops at the borders of both Canada and Mexico, and that the invasion is solely focused on conquering America.** Also consider the fact that in five series, an overwhelming number of the characters, particularly if they are in command, are American. Minus Picard, all the captains are American. We rarely hear of captains with Asian names, Indian names, African names, or even non-British European names. It also applies to the ships too; here's a [[http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Category:Federation_starships comprehensive list]] of all ''Franchise/StarTrek'' starships. Though there are several non-Anglo names, they make up a rather small percentage...** And only twelve out of several hundred are immediately recognisable as names carried by Royal Navy ships - the rest are mainly American... (Isn't that subjective? If you know RN history you can recognise far more, even if USN ships have carried the same name. For example, there have actually been twice as many Royal Navy ships named Enterprise as US Navy ones.)** On a larger scale, consider that the Federation is supposed to be an equal partnership of dozens of alien races, each with their own unique history and culture... yet the vast majority of Federation starships are named after someone or something on Earth.*** Vulcan in particular is supposed to be Earth's equal not just in political authority (as with all other Federation worlds) but also in political and cultural ''influence'', as well as being equal to Earth in population. Like Earth, it is a founding member of the Federation, and its civilization is ''older'' than Earth's. Yet how many Federation starships have Vulcan names? Not many.** Taking it further, every time the plot requires the characters to go beach to Earth, they wind up in San Francisco, usually near-present-day SF with a few historical pieces for variety. It could be handwaved as Star Fleet Academy and Star Fleet HQ are all set in San Francisco. But even that doesn't explain the various times the crews have had to time-travel to periods before Starfleet was founded and ''still'' wound up in San Francisco, [[Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome which has]] [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration happened multiple times]] [[Series/StarTrekVoyager to three different crews.]] If the writers want to get really exotic, Paris seems to be a popular choice. *** Paris is where the civilian government of the Federation is supposed to be located...the part of The Federation that hardly ever gets shown on the show...* ''Series/QuantumLeap'' made a rod for its own back by establishing that Sam Beckett could speak several foreign languages. He should have been fine with leaping outside the US, but he hardly ever did--not even to Canada. The last season did have some episodes set in more exotic locales, but there was usually an American connection. (In one show, Sam is adrift in the Aegean Sea--with Brooke Shields. Lucky man.)** The provincialism in ''Series/QuantumLeap'' is not purely geographical, either: In the episode “Disco Inferno” (set in 1976), 80's CountryMusic, of all things, gets the credit for ending disco’s domination of the music scene. No mention of PunkRock or NewWaveMusic.* In every season of ''Franchise/PowerRangers'', all alien attacks take place in one town. In the [[Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers first]] [[Series/PowerRangersZeo five]] [[Series/PowerRangersTurbo seasons]], it was the same town every year--Angel Grove. Since season seven, ''[[Series/PowerRangersLostGalaxy Lost Galaxy]]'', it has at least been a new town each year. Most of these cities (including Angel Grove) are located in California - [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield as near as we can tell, anyway]]. {{Fanon}} and/or WordOfGod does place some of them outside of CA, but still in the Western US (in states such as [[Series/PowerRangersTimeForce Washington]], [[Series/PowerRangersWildForce Colorado]], and [[Series/PowerRangersMysticForce Oregon]]). ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'''s city of Corinth has some Easter Eggs pointing to Boston, the hometown of that season's first Executive Producer. Only ''Lost Galaxy''[='s=] city of Terra Venture definitively escapes this, being a space colony.** Meanwhile, the ''SuperSentai'' source material places every alien/monster/etc attack [[TokyoIsTheCenterOfTheUniverse in Japan]] without fail, naturally.* The opening of ''Series/{{Rhoda}}'' (the ''Series/TheMaryTylerMooreShow'' SpinOff) has Rhoda tells us "I was born in the Bronx, New York in December, 1941. I've always felt responsible for World War II." It was meant as a joke about how Rhoda wasn't that smart.* The documentary series ''America: The Story of Us'', is devoted not simply to the ''European'' presence in what is now the United States, but specifically to the presence of ''English-speaking'' Europeans. It begins with the 1607 landing at Jamestown, as if Cortés or Ponce de Leon or the city of St. Augustine, Florida (founded 1565) had simply never happened. Justified as it's specifically a documentary about how the ''United States'' arose and developed, ''not'' a documentary European colonization of the Americas altogether. Florida didn't become U.S. territory until 1819, so Florida's history under Spanish rule doesn't become relevant for the program's purpose until the First Seminole War. It'd be like starting off a history of the Roman Empire with the construction of the pyramids in Egypt.* Every episode of the latter two seasons of French Canadian sci-fi comedy series ''Series/DansUneGalaxiePresDeChezVous'' opens with a ''Franchise/StarTrek''-like speech which includes the line:-->"The planetary federation turned to the first world power... ''Canada''. It's ''Canadian'' know-how that allows the launch, on October 28th 2034, of the spaceship Romano-Fafard which left Earth towards the confines of the universe."** The reason this line only appears in the latter two seasons is that the Canadian government refused to renew the show's grant due to a lack of "Canadian content". The show itself has plenty of CreatorProvincialism, but it's not usually that blatant and usually PlayedForLaughs as a parody of ''Franchise/StarTrek'' and its AliensSpeakingEnglish.%% Someone actually tried to Natter here that this show isn't an example of Creator Provincialism because it's "Canadian" and not "Quebecois?" Someone's reading too much into the trope name.* Many of Russian TV shows are set in one of the following settings: a) Moscow, St. Petersburg, suburbs thereof, b) an unnamed and imaginary rural community utterly lacking geographical coordinates of any sort, c) Abroad, with a capital A, characterized by either rampant espionage, crime, international terrorism, and other miscellaneous WackinessEnsues, and/or exaggerated national stereotypes (hijabs and/or pickups and shotguns for everyone, no exceptions whatsoever).* ''Series/{{Highlander}}: The Series'' is a joint French and American production. The series constantly switches between two main settings: an unnamed North American city and Paris. (The former is actually based on two cities, Vancouver, British Columbia and Seattle, Washington. Thus the nickname "Seacouver".) While Immortals and their Watchers are supposedly active around the world, there is little mention of any events outside these two locations. A handful of episodes take place in Scotland or feature brief scenes in the Ukraine, Iraq, etc., but that is it for present day content. Flashbacks were better at having characters and events placed around the world. Even if the main character can just wait around for other Immortals to come to him as ThereCanBeOnlyOne, the lack of movement still qualifies as playing this trope straight.* The Earth Alliance from ''Series/BabylonFive'', The Twelve Colonies from ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'', the Federation from ''Franchise/StarTrek'', the future Earth of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' (and probably many other examples) all have the same political system that the US has. A presidential regime with a president and a vice-president elected for 4 years, a line of succession in case of death of the president and members of government called "secretaries", while this kind of system is not the most common among democracies. Futurama's Earth has even the same flag! This led to the sub-trope: ''UnitedSpaceOfAmerica''.* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' is made of this trope, especially seasons 4 and 5. While the other seasons can kind of be excused as none of the events that are happening are particularly notable in-universe and could be happening elsewhere as well, '''ALL''' of the events related to the Apocalypse and the final battle between good and evil take place in the US. Even with a limited TV budget, you'd think they could've at least spent a day in Canada or something. Considering ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' is mainly filmed in Canada...** Actually, kind of averted: we hear about seals being broken all over the world, and as for the rest, well, [[spoiler: Apocalypse is kind of centered around Winchesters, with Dean and Sam being Lucifer's and Michael's true vessels and all.]]** Season 6 onwards still sets most of the action in America, even though the Winchesters are nothing but hateful annoyances to most factions at this point. Despite both Heaven and Hell going through civil wars and various apocalyptic monsters breaking into the world to cause havoc, all of the villains still feel the need to set off their EvilPlan in the American Mid-West. Crowley, notably, isn't even American-he is Scottish, and his "meat-suit" (i.e. his actor) is British. He's the exception, though-if you see an angel, monster or demon, expect them to be or be possessing an American. ** [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] with the Leviathans: their plans to turn humanity into a [[ImAHumanitarian food supply]] are focused on the United States, because that country has the fattest population on Earth.* Except for ''Series/{{Firefly}}'', every Creator/JossWhedon show has been set in southern California. This does avoid CaliforniaDoubling.* The Mexican soap opera ''El Pecado de Oyuki'' (Oyuki's Sin) was one of the first Mexican TV series that doesn't take place in Mexico, since almost all the characters are Japanese. There's a few foreigners, but all of them are Europeans (mostly British) but we don't see ''any single Mexican character'' in the TV series (Besides the fact that the forests of Cuernavaca were used [[CaliforniaDoubling to simulate the Edo-era Japan.]])** Also regarding ''telenovelas'', most Brazilian soap operas take place in Rio de Janeiro (HQ of the biggest TV station, Globo) or SaoPaulo (where the other major stations are located).* ''Franchise/KamenRider'', like its sister franchise SuperSentai, has everything important happen in Japan. Some series have excuses: ''[[Series/KamenRiderHibiki Hibiki]]'' focuses on Oni and various Japanese spirits, ''[[Series/KamenRiderKabuto Kabuto]]'''s monsters are aliens who came to Earth on a meteor that landed in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, and ''[[Series/KamenRiderDouble Fourze]]'' focuses on a single school because the BigBad is its owner, the teahers are his minions, and they hand out MonsterOfTheWeek trinkets to students. Some series aren't quite so justified, though; mostly the Showa series, where the supposedly international terrorist organizations would only attack Japan instead of going after a country that ''didn't'' have a costumed superhero protecting it.** In the manga ''Manga/KamenRiderSpirits'', the evil space empire Badan attacks the whole world, with the Kamen Riders and their allies splitting up to take them on wherever they appear. The attack is still mostly concentrated on Tokyo, though this is because it was the seat of Badan's power in the past and they see it as "reclaiming what's ours". Even earlier, the first chapter is set in New York City, where Rider ally Kazuya Taki has been telling local kids about the Kamen Riders, causing at least one to muse about how much it sucks that the US doesn't have one.** The Showa Era shows did sorta-kinda explain this: in the first show when the original hero had to be written out of the show due to the actor being injured, he was replaced by another Rider with the handwave that the original was fighting Shocker plots in other countries. It was implied this was the reason the heroes of previous shows only showed up once in a while in their successors' shows, that they were also fighting the current villain group, but conveniently offscreen most of the time.* In {{UsefulNotes/Denmark}}, between 1/5 and 2/5 of the population lives in the capital Copenhagen and its suburbs. If you only know Denmark from television, however, you would think the number was much higher. Almost all Danish TV series take place primarily in Greater Copenhagen. Copenhagen is located on the island of Zealand, and it's noteworthy how many Copenhageners (especially in fiction, but also quite a few in RealLife) think that everything important happens only in Copenhagen, and that the geographically largest region of Denmark, Jutland (with a population number that is actually the same as Zealand), is just a big peninsula filled with nothing but fields, farms, cow, pigs and mentally backwards country bumpkins with weird dialects. Essentially the Danish equivalent of the DeepSouth. While some of the most rural areas of Jutland may have shades of this, the inhabitants of Aarhus (Denmark's second-largest city) have a city lifestyle more similar to Copenhageners than to farmers, and most inhabitants in other larger towns aren't country bumpkins either.** However, a very large percentage of Danish media is centered in Copenhagen. If you are something big in terms of media, you more or less have to live there if you don't want to commute every day. And when all of the screen-writers live in Copenhagen, it may be easier for them to write a city they know.** The same thing happens in UsefulNotes/{{Sweden}} too. Almost every TV show or movie will take place in Stockholm, Gothenburg, or maybe Malmö (mostly due to the proximity to Copenhagen). * ''Series/TheBlackList:'' Despite the task force being set up to catch the most dangerous criminals in the world, nearly all of the action takes place in the United States, and while many Blacklisters are non-American, Americans are disproportionately represented on the list (to date, at least). There are allusions to Blacklisters operating all over the world, and the task force is willing to operate abroad to pursue either criminals or its investigations, but the bulk of any episode will take place in America. Sometimes this is {{Justified}} as some Blacklisters are based out of America, and occasionally it will turn out that Red actually helped lure them to the US to make the apprehension easier, but in most cases its just a ContrivedCoincidence that a Blacklister happens to be doing a job in the US which therefore gives the task force an excuse and opportunity to go after them.* ''Series/{{V 1983}}'': Although the story is said to have a global scale, most of the pivotal events occur in Los Angeles. The weekly series, where Los Angeles itself becomes a TruceZone, tried to avoid this by constantly mentioning the GreatOffscreenWar that took place in other parts of the world, but pretty much all the show's plots still took place in the same area.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Magazines]]* Pro Wrestling Illustrated** Beyond the two held by Wrestling/GeorgeHackenschmidt, the only title belts ''PWI'' consider worthy of world championship status were owned by the Wrestling/NationalWrestlingAlliance, Wrestling/AmericanWrestlingAssociation, Wrestling/WorldWrestlingFederation, Wrestling/WorldChampionshipWrestling, Wrestling/ExtremeChampionshipWrestling and Wrestling/{{T|NA}}otal Nonstop Action. This disqualifies everything not based in the same country as the monthly, including every non NWA belt used by E\Wrestling/{{CMLL}} and Wrestling/ProWrestlingZero1, every title belt sanctioned by The Universal Wrestling Association for Lucha Libre Internacional or otherwise, everything sanctioned by the [[Wrestling/ProWrestlingNOAH GHC]] and [[Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling IWGP]], the [[Wrestling/{{AAA}} Mega Championship belt]], even the [[Wrestling/AllJapanProWrestling Unified Triple Crown]], at their peaks. CMLL's exclusion makes pragmatic sense, as there isn't ''one'' championship belt ''indisputably'' greater than all others([[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters it has at least four]]). One could argue that the despite International Wrestling Grand Prix allowing defenses in multiple countries it had presided only over two explicitly ''Japanese'' rather than "world" feds(which itself could be an example on ''their'' part), but it's harder to explain away everything else as anything but this trope. And it's strange, since the Mexican and Japanese wrestlers are still considered in the monthly rankings and end year awards, frequently cracking the top ten. [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg Canadians too]].** Pro Wrestling Illustrated's wrestler rankings, while more inclusive than those of belts, are not free from signs of provincialism. The PWI 500 stands out in this regard because a lot of people scurry to the stands every year to see who made it but very few people seem to understand just what it is measuring (it's supposed to take wins and losses into account first and foremost with quality of competition, skill of the wrestler and such being lesser factors). Everyone can tell working for a company with a big USA TV deal is the most significant factor though.-->''[[http://uproxx.com/sports/the-10-worst-things-about-this-years-pwi-500/ I like Tyler Breeze a lot too, guys, but two developmental squashes does not make you better than Daisuke Sekimoto.]]''** After the success of the of the Wrestling/GailKim\[[Wrestling/KiaStevens Awesome Kong]] feud in Wrestling/{{TNA}}, PWI released a top fifty for women's wrestlers to compliment the 500, which had previously only included women on rare occasions. But while their work in the budding Knockouts division was nice and worthy of attention, Amazing Kong had been a bigger star in promotions like [[Wrestling/AllJapanWomensProWrestling Zenjo]] and Zero 1 for years beforehand. CMLL had also seen resurgences in its women's divisions years before TNA's Knockouts hit their stride but the wrestlers responsible wouldn't be ranked by PWI unless they already had presence in the fifty states or came there. * ''Magazine/TimeMagazine'': Despite trying to maintain a cosmopolitan image and being read across the entire world the magazine sometimes focuses too much on topics that only Americans would consider to be interesting.** Since 1996 most people elected to be "Person of the Year" have been Americans. The magazine even went so far to name "The American Soldier" "Person of 2003", despite the fact that the Americans weren't the only troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. So far, the only exceptions have been Irishman [[Music/{{U2}} Bono]] (2005), Russian UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin (2007) and Pope Francis (2013), not counting general winners like "You" (2006) and "The Protester" (2011).** When Time tried to elect the "Person of the Century" in 1999 there was criticism that too many names were Americans, and not only that, some of them were solely important to the U.S.A. itself, not the world in general.** Averted with the 2015 selection: UsefulNotes/AngelaMerkel.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]* "Losing My Religion" by Music/{{REM}}. The title is a common expression for loss of temper in Georgia (where the band hails from) and other Southern states, but elsewhere ... [[IThoughtItMeant not]] [[EasyEvangelism so]] [[OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions much]]. The band didn't realise that the majority of the English-speaking world would be having to guess what they were on about (and therefore make the wrong assumptions).* Music/EltonJohn's "Social Disease," a country-western tribute in which the tequila-swilling cowboy "gets bombed for breakfast... dinnertime and tea," and his landlady lives "in a caravan" (trailer). Given that Bernie Taupin had been able to write largely convincing (if dramatized) Americans on the Western-themed album ''Tumbleweed Connection'' this is ''probably'' intentional.* Music/{{Genesis}}' ''Music/TheLambLiesDownOnBroadway'' is a ConceptAlbum about a Puerto Rican street punk living in [[BigApplesauce the streets of New York City]], yet Britisher PeterGabriel's lyrics refer to "notes and coins" (dollars and cents) and "progressive hypocrites" (liberal hypocrites).* Music/{{Ludacris}}' song "Move Bitch" says that he is 'doing 100 on the highway, so if you do the speed limit, get the fuck outta my way...' which is funny when heard by people in countries using the metric system, considering 100 km/h (62 mph) is usually lower than most highway speed limits in those places.** Not to mention that in Germany, the highways don't have speed limits. This was the base of a sketch by German comedian Nepo Fitz, in which he speculated that if Ludacris would try going only 100 mph (about 160 km/h) on the left lane of German motorways, he would be constantly harassed by otherwise boring middle-aged white-collar workers for blocking them by going too slow.* Swedish PowerMetal ban {{Sabaton}}'s latest album, ''Carolus Rex'', is about the rise and fall of the Swedish Empire.* In general this can be found on Christmas compilation albums that bundle Christmas carols together with secular winter songs like "Sleigh Ride", "Winter Wonderland", and "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow". Winter and Christmas are naturally associated in the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, but not so much elsewhere.** Despite living in the Southern Hemisphere, Australians usually aren't bothered, since very little of the country receives snow anyway; unironically associating snow with a holiday that's right at the start of summer is apparently easier than associating it with the actual Australian winter, which is just cold, wet and occasionally windy.[[/folder]]

[[folder:New Media]]* Google Translate used to translate 华裔女孩 as "Chinese-American girl", when it simply means a girl of Chinese descent who is not a Chinese citizen, without ''any'' reference to the US. It has now been changed, however.** It should be noted that Google Translate uses automated algorithms that compare different translations of websites instead of the translations being defined by hand, which can result in errors like this.** This is the Google bots picking up on a Chinese bias rather than an American one. The Chinese word for "American" is frequently used to mean all foreigners in general (including south and south-east Asians), and "America" is essentially synonymous with "waiguo". ** Google Translate also appears to sporadically convert things like placenames, names of bands or artists and other terms that are rarely used outside of the language from their area from the original text into ones local to the language it's translating to, rather than maintaining the one that makes more sense in the original context. Phrases like "Raggende manne komt naar de Efteling" are translated to "Sabaton is coming to the Big Ben." (Although sometimes the words remain untranslated when used in a slightly different sentence.)[[/folder]]

[[folder:Pinball]]* The opening narration in ''Pinball/AttackFromMars'' indicates the entire world is under siege from the Martians, and [[AliensSpeakingEnglish the Martians themselves say]] they want to conquer Earth. However, all of the motherships are located in the United States and the European Union.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Podcast]]* ''Podcast/PlumbingTheDeathStar'': ** To tie in with ''Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'', an episode was made about what other wizarding schools besides Hogwarts would be like. What country did the Melbourne-based cast choose to focus on? Australia, of course.** If you can't tell from the title what "Would It Really Be Nice if the World Was Cadbury?" is about, don't worry. The guys immediately admit that making an episode about an obscure ad for Cadbury chocolate might alienate their listeners who aren't Australians born in the mid-eighties.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Radio]]* ''The Reduced Shakespeare Radio Show'' makes little effort to hide that the Creator/ReducedShakespeareCompany is an American troupe. The show includes an extended sketch about Creator/WilliamShakespeare's little-known trip to America, a place mentioned only once in Shakespeare's entire unabridged works.* Creator/BBC sitcom ''Stockport! So Good They Named it Once!'' played on this trope, trying to find some [[BigApplesauce New York-style glamour]] in a quiet OopNorth town famed only for making hats and having a very long railway viaduct. [[/folder]]

[[folder:Sports]]* The alleged issue of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coast_bias "East Coast bias"]] in North American sports, which claims that, since most sportswriters are based in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity, they give undue focus to teams in the eastern half of the country (and particularly franchises in the Northeast) and short shrift to teams out west. Whether it exists or not, to what extent it exists, and other questions [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment are probably best left to another article]].* The naming of the "World Series" in baseball is a classic example. Partially justified, at least until recent decades, in that baseball was played in very few countries outside the US, but still... (This is to some degree the GrandfatherClause at work: the US in the 19th and early 20th centuries was famous for its bombast, and styling the national baseball championship the "World Series" was wholly unremarkable even for those who realized it was silly. If baseball were a new thing, the "World Series" would most certainly not be MLB's championship.) For what it's worth, one of the teams to win the World Series, the Toronto Blue Jays, are based in Canada...who as of 2004 are the ''only'' MLB franchise to operate outside the US.** Actually there is kind of a reason (though a twisted one) to calling the champions of Major League Baseball (and the NFL for that matter) "world champion" - there simply is no other team in that sport that could claim to be better. That's also the reason why the predecessor to the current Super Bowl was called the "AFL-NFL World Championship Game". The American and National Football League were the only professional Football Leagues at that time and naturally the one who won a duel between both champions would be the best in the world.[[note]]The Canadian Football League has been around since 1958.[[/note]] It can be argued that the "world champion" crowned by the International Federation of American Football (currently the US) is not a world champion at all, because no NFL talent is allowed to compete and hence the best players are excluded.** Things might be changing with the World Series, however, as of baseball's inclusion into the Olympics for the 2020 games.* Any sport mostly focused on one country / region for that matter. Up until the 1960s, there was no Ice Hockey outside the NHL according to US newspapers. And it took quite some time (and Dirk Nowitzki) to realize that Basketball is played outside the NBA. Baseball is a different story, but American Football is still called "NFL Football" '''even in other places where it is played''' - all that despite there being a European Championship of American Football since the 1980s.* The Australian Football League (the premier competition of UsefulNotes/AustralianRulesFootball) has 18 teams, of which 10 are based in Victoria (and all but one of those are based in UsefulNotes/{{Melbourne}}). Somewhat justified in that the League is an expansion of the Victorian Football League, and Victoria is the birthplace and home of the game.* The Argentinian Primera Division consists of 20 teams from which 12 are concentrated in the Greater Buenos Aires province (from which the tournament came into fruition and its oldest teams were founded); these clubs have amassed more than 70% of all national league titles from an area that represents less than 13% from the rest of the country. Though this is understandable and logic given that the Greater Buenos Aires area contains one third of the total population of Argentina, there was actually a considerable bias towards the Bonaerense clubs during the 35-plus year tenure of late AFA president Julio Grondona (a huge name not only in AFA, but also on CONMEBOL and FIFA), who blocked funding and development of the clubs outside the Argentinian capital.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', in the older background, it was hinted that the Golden Throne was not only in Britain but also in Nottingham, where Games Workshops' headquarters are situated. Newer material makes it more likely to be somewhere in Eastern Europe, where the Emperor is supposed to have arisen. At least, if the Throne is anywhere near the center of his palace, which ''covers much of Eurasia.''** The Literature/HorusHeresy novels avert this, fixing the original part of the Imperial Palace atop the Himalayas in Tibet and/or Nepal. This may just be the Emperor's sense of spectacle, or may be a Franchise/{{Gundam}} ShoutOut.** Older fluff (now retconned) indicated that the [[BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy Emperor was Jesus]], but a still-canon one is that he was Saint George (the PatronSaint of England).** The short story "The Last Church", in which the Emperor destroys the last remaining church on Earth, is set in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindisfarne Lindisfarne]], a church in northern Britain.* {{TabletopGame/Battletech}} located the original court of the Star League, the court from which all of human-inhabited space was briefly ruled, in UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}}, where Creator/{{FASA}} just incidentally had some of their offices.** Also, up untill the source books published post-FASA's Demise, most of the Successor States didn't really adhere to their alleged adopted cultures to any great degree beyond a few token words and all tended to be written as Ersatz Americas.* Speaking of FASA, another major universe of their's, ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'', has its default setting being future-Seattle. Other locations are given some description in suppliments, but not as much detail as Seattle and its surrounding area recieves.** FASA may have had some of their offices in Seattle, but their company HQ was in Chicago which was averting this trope... at least until Chicago became a big part of the setting fiction itself when an invasion of magical insect spirits decimated the city. The nuclear bomb blast that created "Bug City" in Chicago was detonated at the FASA offices. * The original ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} Time Travel'' postulated one alternate world called "Campbell", where the science fiction editor Creator/JohnWCampbell died, therefore not encouraging science fiction writers, which in turn meant that students were not inspired to go into the sciences and science hasn't developed since the end of World War II. The version in the revamped ''GURPS Infinite Worlds'' lampshaded the provincialism in this concept by pointing out that since science stopped all over the world, not just in the United States, some suspect a different cause.** One might note it is not only geographical provincialism, but also [[GeekReferencePool cultural]]. People who aren't roleplayers and SF&F fans probably wouldn't equate scientific development with the popularity of science fiction.* The majority of the action in ''{{TabletopGame/Rifts}}'' takes place in the (post-apocalyptic) central United States and southern Canada--not coincidentally, areas near the location of its publishing company.** However, there are sourcebooks for almost every other part of the world (South America, Africa, Germany, Russia, etc.) including other regions of the U.S. (New England, the Southwest, etc.).* In ''TabletopGame/TheDresdenFiles'' RPG, it is assumed that you know a large city to base your game on. This can be hard if you live in a country that doesn't have the population to have such a large city.* [[Creator/GaryGygax Gary Gygax's]] ''original'' ''TabletopGame/{{Greyhawk}}'' campaign setting (the one he ran in his basement in the early-mid Seventies) was based on a parallel Earth, with the players' home stomping grounds being the Great Lakes region of the US. The City of Greyhawk itself was an {{Expy}} of UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}}. When the setting was published in a box set in 1980, however, although specific adventure locations remained, the geography had been completely altered.* While there are supplemental books for other places in the world, the majority of the source material for TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse centers around the United States.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theater]]* Benjamin Britten's ''Theatre/PeterGrimes'' and ''Theatre/AlbertHerring'' are both set in his native East Suffolk.* Creator/HenrikIbsen. Most of his plays take place in Norway, and has a Norwegian subtext, although some plays are more subtle than others. Averted prominently in ''Theatre/EmperorAndGalilean'', and in his first play ''Catilina'', both with ancient Rome as a premise. Taken UpToEleven in ''Theatre/TheLeagueOfYouth'', which is a satire on the Norwegian political system, and with the action taking place in a certain small town in the east of Norway. Exaggerated even more in ''Theatre/ComedyOfLove'', which is set in a small suburban area outside the capital - ''and nowhere else''![[/folder]]

[[folder:Toys]]* A lot of WesternAnimation/ThomasTheTankEngine merchandise lines that aren't designed in the UK often fall victim to this. For example, the Wooden Railway and Take 'n' Play lines have American style cabooses as opposed to British brake vans (although Toad is included in both ranges) and some of the earlier TOMY rolling stock are thinly disguised Japanese vehicles.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]* The ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' series of games is, in theory, set in America, but is made by Scottish developer DMA Design/Rockstar North** When it came to the early games, Americans who play them feel like they are neither like the actual USA nor quite [[EagleLand Hollywood USA.]]** A lot of place-names in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'' are thinly-disguised ones from Scottish cities. There's also an exact replica of the Forth Rail Bridge. Rockstar North is based in Edinburgh and Dundee and evidently like their in-jokes.** Some more British terminology also sneaks into the dialogue. For example, in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIII'', the mafia Don sends you on a mission involving a bomb in a "[[UsefulNotes/BritishEnglish dustcart]]"--a term which is completely out of place in the setting; [[SeparatedByACommonLanguage Americans would use "garbage truck" or possibly some other regional term]].** The HD games, for the most part, try to downplay this as much as possible, especially ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV''. The developers still put in a couple of British in-jokes here and there, however.*** Try as they might the writers were ''terrible'' at writing [[GangBangers Hood Lingo]]; Slink Johnson ad-libbed the majority of his lines while performing as Lamar, only using the script as a rough guideline for the dialogue's direction.** There's a car with weak performance stats that's all over the first game, the Mundano. It's clearly modeled after the Ford Mondeo that could be seen all over the place in Great Britain back then. It was also availabe in North America, but under the names Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique, so the [[PunnyName pun in the name]] only works for those who know its British and European name.* ''[[{{VideoGame/Civilization}} Civilization IV]] ''shows signs of this in its soundtrack. Although the opening theme is in Swahili and the Ancient and Classical eras' soundtracks include Asian and African music, beginning in the Medieval era, the soundtrack consists entirely of European and North American music, with the Modern era's soundtrack consisting entirely of the works of US composer John Adams.* After production of ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' shifted over Stateside, the story primarily centred on the apparently world-dominating [[EagleLand United Federation]], complete with a president and a San Francisco analogue. ''VideoGame/ShadowTheHedgehog'' expands on it: while other cities are said to be under attack, only the UF is shown, and the BigBad seems to think the UF President controls the entire planet.* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'':** [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in ''VideoGame/{{Halo 2}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}''. When the Covenant come to attack Earth, the goal of of their efforts was located in Africa, [[AliensInCardiff specifically around south-eastern Kenya]], since they were interested in an artifact left behind by the aliens that would lead them to the Ark (not to be confused with Noah's). Creator/{{Bungie}} (founded in UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} and moved to UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}} before the release of ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'') said in a panel discussion that this aversion was deliberate.** While the headquarters of the UNSC (and its parent organization the UEG) is in Sydney, Australia, the culture of the UNSC as a whole has a lot of recognizably American bits, like how they organize their military. That said, humanity's individual colonies tend to avert this trope.* ''VideoGame/SimCity'' can allow a player to build any kind of city or those that resemble one from the world, but unfortunately, all cities wind up suffering from [[SoCalization looking like a place from Southern California]].** ''[=SimCity 4=]'' is probably the worst offender of this, as everything, from the Empire State building having palm trees to the BART-style transportation systems to the drab adobe/earthtone colors of the standard buildings and even the terrain all drive the fact that the creators based everything on their California home.* Both ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer'' settings play with this a bit: every game in the series bar [[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianDawn the original]] has had at least one or two missions set in the United States:** In ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2 Red Alert 2]]'' you will visit the Hollywood studios and can see various signs with the Westwood Logo (before EA bought them out and dissolved them). You can even recruit three heroes, all of which have hilariously overpowered abilities. ** Done hilariously in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3'' where the Empire of the Rising Sun invades the US at Los Angeles, where Creator/ElectronicArts's offices are. The Empire, controlled by the player, [[DeathByCameo can then target and demolish said offices]]...* Averted in ''VideoGame/XCom'' where you establish a truly international force, encounter aliens all over the world, and have countries cut their contribution to your funding if you ignore them. Though in Firaxis' ''{{VideoGame/XCOM Enemy Unknown}}'' even soldiers from Japan or Ukraine speak perfect American English. Fixed in the expansion pack.** The Third Person Tactics game, ''VideoGame/TheBureauXCOMDeclassified'', on the other hand, is set within Cuban Missile Crisis-era America, where the titular Bureau's job is to hide how devastated the US is so that the Soviet Union can't exploit it in the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. Some have pointed out that this is (arguably) more realistic than people from around the world all knowing the same language and getting along.* Mostly averted in the ''VideoGame/{{Resistance}}'' series; developer Insomniac is based in the USA, but the first game was set entirely in Great Britain (despite having an American lead character who [[AmericaSavesTheDay saves the day]]) and the sequel, while mostly taking place in America, also features Iceland and Mexico, and it's made very clear that the alien invasion has decimated the whole world. Only the third game is solely set in America. [[GaidenGame PSP game]] ''Retribution'' also shows western Europe.* A common fan complaint is that Florida-based [[Creator/ElectronicArts Tiburon]], developers of the ''NCAA Football'' series, overrate players from Florida schools and the SEC and correspondingly underrate players from other parts of the country. This complaint sometimes extends to the Florida teams in the NFL getting higher ratings in ''VideoGame/MaddenNFL'' as well, as Tiburon makes both games.* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil3Nemesis'' 's Raccoon City is a supposed to be a modern, Midwestern, American city, but the size of the streets and presence of extensive back-alleys and shopping arcades are clear evidence that Raccoon was based on a contemporary Japanese city. For reference, many of the streets are blocked by a single, longitudinal car across the road. When's the last time you [Americans] saw a road that narrow, especially in a city of over 100,000 residents? Further games in the series that revisit Raccoon, however, seem to retcon them to the proper width.** For the most part, though, the entire ResidentEvil series averts this. Not a single character among the main cast is Japanese or of Japanese descent.* The first two ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' games took place on the west coast, particularly in California, home of Interplay Entertainment. When Maryland-based [[Franchise/TheElderScrolls Bethesda Softworks]] acquired the franchise, they set ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' in Washington DC. You can even visit the company's ruined headquarters in the game. Though this may have been done deliberately to avoid having to follow the previous games' canon. ''Videogame/{{Fallout 4}}'' remains in the East Coast, being set in Boston.** Averted with ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas''. The developers just thought it would be cool to see a post-apocalyptic UsefulNotes/LasVegas.* ''VideoGame/GranTurismo 5'' , developed in Japan, has a car list of over 1000, and about 150 of those are Nissans [[note]]And 42 of those were ''Skylines''![[/note]]. Most of the cars in the game hail from Japan.* The ''VideoGame/{{Forza}} Motorsport'' series, developed in the United States, has a fairly even distribution between ''modern'' cars across the continents, but in classic cars, it's almost entirely classic muscle and high-end supercars from the 60s to the 80s. [[DownloadableContent Downloadable content packages]] after the release of ''Forza Motorsport 4'' have helped to balance out classic car distribution by adding in more classic Japanese and British cars.** ''Forza Horizon'' is set in Colorado, but the game's licensed soundtrack is utterly dominated by European artists (with many of them being relatively unheard of in the US), since the game was developed in the UK. ''Horizon 2'' is set in Southern Europe, so at least the European dominance is justified.* Something of a JustifiedTrope for the Massachusetts-based developers of the ''iRacing'' sim because of the [[RealLifeWritesThePlot cost and logistics]] of shipping their laser scanning equipment around the world limited the opportunities to add non-American tracks until the sim became established and they could afford it.* While not a Sim per se, ''VideoGame/{{Driveclub}}'' was developed in the UK, and most of the cars featured are European: out of the ~100 cars, the only non-european cars were the Marussia B2 and Venom GT, and the oldest car from the list was the Ferrari 430 Scuderia, from ''2007''. Thankfully the Season Pass balanced it giving 4 Chevrolets, 2 Dodges/[=SRTs=], the Lykan Hypersport and some others. Also, cars from the previous century, such as the Lambo Diablo SV, Mclaren F1 and Ferrari F40/F50 were introduced. However, the 2 only japanese things the game has are tracks and the console where it's played, but no cars.* EA Canada, developers of EA's ''[[VideoGame/NHLHockey NHL]]'', ''[[VideoGame/FIFASoccer FIFA]]'' and early ''VideoGame/NeedForSpeed'' games, has been showing some of this by overrating Vancouver's local teams and underrating their rivals, or the east coast teams in general. ''FIFA 12'' contained the first non-generic Major League Soccer stadium in the form of BC Place, home to the newly-joined Vancouver Whitecaps, which was still under renovation at the time of the game's release. As far back as ''VideoGame/NeedForSpeed II'', the Canada level was very obviously based on Vancouver and the Coast Mountains, and included the Sky Train and Expo Centre as prominent parts of the scenary.* ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' starts with the Reaper invasion of Earth, in which Shepard was fighting them on Vancouver (a day's drive away from Creator/BioWare's headquarters). Though this would later be averted as when the game returns to Earth, the battlefield is instead on London.** Emily Wong's [[CharacterBlog liveblog]] of the Reaper invasion took place mostly in the greater Los Angeles area, which includes Electronic Arts' headquarters.** Other places get a throwaway line in the background information - the first cities to fall to the reaper invasion were stated as Adelaide, Hamburg, Al Jubail and Fort Worth. But that's about it.** Lampshaded if Shepard romances Traynor. Shepard promises to take them to drinks in Vancouver after everything gets sorted out, but Traynor complains that it's not a more famous, romantic city like Paris or Venice. "You never take me anywhere nice."* Sweden-based Creator/ParadoxInteractive has often given extra attention to Sweden and Scandinavia in their strategy games. ''VideoGame/CrusaderKings'', ''VideoGame/EuropaUniversalis'', and ''[[VideoGame/VictoriaAnEmpireUnderTheSun Victoria]]'' all provide the player with the option to unify Scandinavia into a single nation. Paradox is particularly unrepentant with regards to this trope.** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWAP0RNFOmc Their release trailer]] for ''Europa Universalis IV'' featured a mighty Swedish Empire.** Of all the pagan faiths that existed in the timeframe of ''Crusader Kings 2'' but were effectively gone by that of ''Europa Universalis IV'', one exists as a functional religion in the files of EUIV without having the Crusader Kings 2 Converter: Norse. It even gets a special feature in one of the expansions, and can show up randomly if fantastical random New World is activated. * The ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' games made after the 4th generation have many Japanese motifs, even if they're set in fantasy versions of the United States (''Black and White'', ''Sun and Moon'') and France (''X and Y''). Abundant Shrine in the Unova region is obviously a Japanese shrine, the Lass trainer class wears an outfit based on a Japanese school uniform, and the Trainer's School in Alola is modeled after a Japanese school building. Many random trainers in the untranslated versions have Japanese names.* Creator/HideoKojima's games always had a very odd relation with this trope, despite Kojima being Japanese himself:** The setting of ''VisualNovel/{{Snatcher}}'' is in the city of Neo-Kobe in Japan, except all the important characters are ''Westerners'' (plus a Chinese one) and the only Japanese guys you're going to find there are nameless extras.** Played a bit in ''VisualNovel/{{Policenauts}}'': While almost all the main characters are also Westerners, there's a few named Japanese ones, or with Japanese ancestry, and the main employeer in the space colony when the game takes place is Japanese-owned.** The ''Franchise/MetalGear'' series plays with this trope to ridiculous levels. Just like the aforementioned games, almost all the characters are technically Western too, but many of the characters, including the protagonist Solid Snake included, has some relation with Japan, even if that relation barely matters for the plot, other than helping the Japanese players to empathize with the already too Western cast of the series. The only characters with closer ties with Japan are [[VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPeaceWalker Kazuhira Miller]] (even if he looks too American, being half-American himself)[[note]]aside from him are easter egg characters modeled after the voice actors[[/note]], [[VideoGame/MetalGearAcid Teliko Friedman, Michiko Takiyama]], [[ButtMonkey Johnny Sasaki]] and Allen Ishiba, a Japanese-American soldier from a radio drama. *** ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidGroundZeroes'' plays with this trope to hilarious levels: The only Japanese character you're going to find here is [[spoiler:'''Hideo Kojima''' himself]]. *** ''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance'' plays this trope somewhat straight: The main character is a American-Liberian Ninja cyborg, one of the stages of the game takes place in a Japanese garden, one of the bad guys is a Japanese-Brazilian ninja as well and [[spoiler:in the most oddest case of this, Senator Armstrong use a Sumo wrestling pose before fighting against Raiden]]. The odd part came with the fact it's heavily implied he somewhat ''dislikes'' Japanese culture.*** Plenty of Japanese elements sneak itself in the games when they wouldn't make sense in a Western setting such as Arsenal Tengu or Volgin citing "kuwabara kuwabara", the latter has as much sense as a KKK member singing ''rap music''.** Subverted in the ''VideoGame/ZoneOfTheEnders'' series, as there's a single Japanese character, but just like the rest of the cast, nobody cares about from which country they came from; what ''planet'' they currently hail from is more important.** Averted in ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaLordsOfShadow'', since the entire game takes place in Medieval Europe.** Even the upcoming ''VideoGame/DeathStranding'' keeps with this as well, as the setting seems to be set in a Western country and all the characters revealed so far aren't Asians.* Both ''VisualNovel/AnalogueAHateStory'' and ''VisualNovel/HatePlus'' avoids this since, despite almost all the main characters being Korean, the author is a white Canadian girl, Creator/ChristineLove. In fact, in ''Analogue'', there's a section that shows the various works she used for research in order to avert this trope.* A partial example: Though ''VideoGame/StarTropics'' and its sequel were made by a Japanese team, it was only released in the US, so in the sequel it was quickly revealed that the main character lives in Washington State, where Nintendo of America is located.* In a meta-example of this, many fighting games features fighters who normally practice a martial art from their home country, with the sole exception of ProfessionalWrestling, since for some reason it's normally shoehorned [[WrestlerInAllOfUs in any fighting style, regardless the ethnicity of the fighter]]. There's a few exceptions to this rule:** [[VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters Momoko]] is a Japanese ''capoeirista''. Other SNK capoeiristas like [[VideoGame/FatalFury Bob Wilson, Richard Meyer and Soiree]] were Brazilians and Germans respectively.** [[VideoGame/RageOfTheDragons Kang Jae-mo]] is a Korean pro-wrestler. While there's lots of Korean pro-wrestlers in RealLife, gaming-wise almost all Korean fighters tends to use Tae-kwon-do or another Korean fighting style.** [[VideoGame/GuiltyGear Kum Haehyun]] subverts this a bit: Despite being Korean, Haehyun's fighting style doesn't resemble anything related with Korean martial arts.* ''VideoGame/KingdomComeDeliverance'' takes place in the medieval Kingdom of Bohemia, in the modern-day Czech Republic. Daniel Vávra, the director of the project, is Czech, as are many others working for Warhorse Studios.* A very odd version of this trope happens in the ''VideoGame/TheNinjaWarriors'' games. The game take place in a Western country, but both rebels and Balgar's army uses ninjas, albeit in the rebels' case, they're robotic ones. It's never explained in the games why both sides uses ninjas, along regular troop soldiers, other than the games were programmed in Japan.* ''VideoGame/EternalDarkness'' concerns four primary parts of the world -- the Middle East, a cathedral in France, a temple mound in Cambodia, and a mansion in Rhode Island. That said, its characters come from all walks of life, but the last playable one, Michael Edwards, is from Canada, the homeland of Creator/SiliconKnights.* ''VideoGame/OperationFlashpoint'' and the ''VideoGame/{{ARMA}}'' series does this, in particular ''ARMA II'', where the main setting of Chernarus includes Czech names for towns and characters who speak faux-Czech, and the third DLC for its expansion is "Army of the Czech Republic".* Two ''VideoGame/AceCombat'' games did this for the box art. ''VideoGame/AceCombat3Electrosphere''[='=]s original Japanese cover, as well as the cover for the PAL version, had the game's futuristic equivalent of the Russian Su-37, while the American release instead featured the American F-22. ''VideoGame/AceCombat5TheUnsungWar'' had the F-14 on all versions of the boxart with two exceptions - the Spanish release replaced it with the Eurofighter Typhoon, and the French release with the Dassault Rafale.** A very odd version of this trope happens with two characters wielding Japanese names: Kei Nagase and [[VideoGame/AceCombat3Electrosphere Rena Hirose]]. With the sole exception of the light novel ''Ace Combat: Ikaros in the Sky'', when she is properly Japanese, Nagase hails from the Strangereal version of the Western world and the same goes for Rena. The odd part of both girls came with the fact there's ''no equivalent of Japan or even Asia''.[[note]]By Asia, we mean the ''the entire continent'', both the West and East parts of it. Keep in mind [=AC3=] was originally self-contained and unrelated with the Strangereal universe and it was implied Rena hails from what it was formerly know as Japan, until the mega-corporations make the concept of nation completely obsolete, until it was retconned out later on.[[/note]] Even more egregious, at least in Rena's case, her name is normally written in ''kanji'', while Nagase's one is written in both katakana (the alphabet used for writing foreign names and words) and in the Western order, not to mention both girls, especially [[IllGirl Rena]], are treated in-universe as something special or weird.** The plane roster is an aversion of this trope. Despite the series being made by [[Creator/BandaiNamcoEntertainment a Japanese company]], most planes aren't Japanese. Throughout the entire franchise, there have been only three Japanese aircraft featured (discounting the one from ''[[VideoGame/AceCombatAssaultHorizon Assault Horizon]]'' that was made by a fictional Japanese company), so good luck finding an [[KatanasOfTheRisingSun A6M Zero]] or a [[KaijuDefenseForce F-1 Kaizen or F-2 Viper Zero]].* In ''VideoGame/PunchOut'' for the Wii, Bear Hugger is portrayed as originally being from Salmon Arm, British Columbia (where Next Level Games is headquartered). He's actually from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.* ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' and ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'' are set in parallels to the United States (explicitly in the latter's case) and use dollars as currency, but since the games were made in Japan, items seem to be priced as if they were in yen. This results in things like a "Cheap" Bracelet costing $98. (Although a lot of items would be too ''cheap'' if this was the case, since the yen's value has been less than one US cent for most of history, and peaked at about 1¼ cents the year ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' came out.)* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' doesn't explicitly state what part of the world the Underground is in, but the game's roots as an American-developed project are made clear when you use the "Check" command on a Vegetoid, who is described as "Not monitored by the USDA." For you non-Americans reading this, that's the United States Department of Agriculture.* ''VideoGame/{{Nioh}}'' is interesting about this, the game takes place in Edo-Period Japan, but stars a blond, blue-eyed samurai as the protagonist, who is based on a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Adams_(sailor) real British sailor who became an honorary samurai.]]* ''VideoGame/AztecWars'', made by a Russian development studio, is set in an alternate timeline where the Aztecs have conquered all of Europe; save for China, there's only one nation that can stand against them... and that's the Russians, of course. They're also [[NoCampaignForTheWicked the only nation to get a campaign of their own.]]* Being a Japanese game, ''VideoGame/ATrain'' mostly has Japanese trains. Even the world-wide version of ''A-Train III'' with European character faces, only labeled ''A-Train'', has two fantasy trains, two American trains and 17 Japanese trains plus the computer-controlled Shinkansen.* ''VideoGame/TransportTycoon'' looks ''very'' British. The buildings aren't exclusively British, but the overall style goes into that direction. Also, all rail vehicles except for the TGV are modeled after locomotives and railcars operating in Great Britain.* Likewise, the first two ''VideoGame/RollerCoasterTycoon'' games featured a few tip-offs as to their UK origin: Two of the three "real parks" offered in the expansion packs were in England (Alton Towers and Blackpool Pleasure Beach), and the third (Heide Park) is in Germany. There is also a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helter_skelter_(ride) helter skelter]] included among the available rides (referred to as a "spiral slide"), something rarely seen in US parks. Then Infogrames neglected to localize the sequel for US audiences, leading to litter bins suddenly becoming rubbish bins, for example. Eventually a patch was released to remedy this.* ''VideoGame/MiniMetro'' has any number of real-world subways you can try to replicate, one of which is Auckland's. Except Auckland doesn't have a metro system, so why is it there, you may ask? Dinosaur Polo Club, the publisher and developer, is based there.* While ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' is mainly set in what appears to be the US, Australia--or more accurately, a comical parody of it--would go on to get a lot of attention in the backstory: It's where the [[{{Unobtanium}} wonder element]] australium was discovered, and as a result has become a center of insanely advanced technology despite being, as Elizabeth put it, "a nation of idiots". Then there was the Australian Christmas Update, which centered around the legend of Old Nick, basically an evil Australian Santa Claus. Why the obsession with Australia? Most likely because Team Fortress's creator Robin Walker lived there before he got a job at Valve.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]* Parodied in [[http://nonadventures.com/2006/09/09/the-torment-of-a-thousand-yesterdays/ the first strip]] of ''Webcomic/TheNonAdventuresOfWonderella''. ** Later [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] and [[DefiedTrope defied]] [[http://nonadventures.com/2011/10/01/london-galling/ here]]. [[Series/DoctorWho The Doctor]] is convinced the aliens will attack London, Kamen Rider is positive Tokyo is the target, and Wonderella is pushing New York. [[spoiler: They attack Antarctica]].* All of the Kids in ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' are American (Jade lives on a fictional island in the Pacific, but her family comes from America), and the fate of the rest of the world gets shown all of once [[spoiler: when Becsprite blows Jade's meteor up and is briefly shown eradicating a nameless city in either Australia or Southest Asia and basically vaporizing the entire Pacific Ocean]].[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]* At times, Wiki/TVTropes. Uses of phrases like "our part of the world" and so on, especially when used to contrast with other cultures and nations, reveal the assumptions of the troper responsible. Usually involves [[WeAllLiveInAmerica we all live in the US]] or other progressive/liberal Western perspective and neglects if not outright disparages as backward the existence of conservative-minded non-Western audiences or tropers who may disagree with certain presumptions.** Go count how many times 9/11 is mentioned under HarsherInHindsight.** Or how many American films, actors and TV shows have their own article as opposed to other countries. The overabundance of pages and entire character sheets for major American {{superhero}} comics like Creator/{{Marvel}} or Creator/{{DC|Comics}} also says a lot. Even European works still get a fair share. Works that are released in neither region, if they get their own pages, will probably just receive maintenance from one or two editors. ** Whenever a troper mentions "our troops" in an article and talks about how people should respect them rest assured he actually means American troops.** Some works and products are [[MarketBasedTitle released in multiple territories with different names for each territory]], or [[DubNameChange have terms and character names changed for localized versions]]. You can sometimes guess what region the author of a particular edit hailed from based on the titles they use; for example, someone who uses "UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis" is probably from North America. (It's known as the Sega Mega Drive in the rest of the world, including its native country of UsefulNotes/{{Japan}})** If a page describes the values of a culture different from the modern United States, expect the page to {{pothole}} to ValuesDissonance.** Entries sometimes follow a mention of the defeat of Nazi Germany with stating that World War II is over, forgetting about the still defiant Japanese and their invasion of East and Southeast Asia.* Any film that underperforms in the United States is considered a failure on US web sites, even when the international gross is high (as shown in [[http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/hollywoods-top-10-flop-squad-15525?page=0,2 this article]], where ''Film/ThePrestige'' - which grossed over $100 million internationally - and ''Film/TerminatorSalvation'' - which grossed almost $400 million worldwide - are counted as flops).* Subverted in [[http://www.theonion.com/article/us-upset-after-aliens-land-in-italy-4327 this Onion article]] in which the Bush administration officially declares itself "confused and saddened" that alien diplomats chose to land in Italy.* Much of ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'''s Atlanta origins appear on the website. One example is an easter egg for the first WebAnimation/TeenGirlSquad episode where Strong Bad appears and asks Cheerleader to go to Rally's with him (or Checker's or Sonic or whatever is in the show's universe). Rally's, Checker's and Sonic are restaurant chains best known in the South.* ''WebAnimation/{{Ducktalez}}'': Duckberg is in Canada, as Vegeta!Scrooge destroyed Winnipeg by accident in 3 and Ogopogo showed up in 7.* ''WebVideo/EpicRapBattlesOfHistory'': Most episodes have at least one American participating in the battle, sometimes not even people very well known outside of the USA, such as Bill Nye, Mr. Rogers, Randy Savage...* WebVideo/ThatGuyWithTheGlasses: Most reviewers on the site are American and thus reference American pop culture and customs all the time, often forgetting that not all of their viewers are familiar with the things they discuss. On the same token they will often (sometimes tongue in cheek) talk about a film scene or commercial or something else that ''gave '''us''' a patriotic feeling''. Similarly they will judge/review many things from an American viewpoint, which can sometimes be bizarre or even jarring to their foreign viewers. ** WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic: *** Often talks about comic book movie adaptations of superhero comics in his editorials, which aren't that popular outside the USA, especially not with people beyond the age of 16. Yet Doug (and his fellow reviewers) will talk with great admiration and glee about the deeds of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and others, as if they are some kind of godly humanitarian activists. *** In his Top 11 countdown of ''Best "WesternAnimation/SouthPark" episodes [[spoiler:Doug put [[Recap/SouthParkS5E9OsamaBinLadenHasFartyPants "Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants"]] on the number one spot because by poking fun at the events of 9/11 the episode helped America get through the trauma of the events. Which is sweet and all, and it is, of course, Doug's personal list, but at the same time it's a very Americacentric reason to like that particular episode]]. ** A state-centric view can occur at times: Doug has filmed some episodes cheering for Chicago teams, Webvideo/TheCinemaSnob will often mention Illinois, and the NYC-based Webvideo/TheNostalgiaChick and friends love Broadway musicals.** Podcast/{{Radiodrome}}: An entire episode was devoted to comic book movies, but mostly discussed superhero comics of American origin. The only foreign one mentioned was ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'', British yes, but again a super hero comic, and ''ComicBook/{{Tintin}}'', but only for a millisecond. Nobody seemed familiar with Tintin and thus they continued their discussion about American superhero comics.** On the other hand there's [[WebVideo/BadMovieBeatdown Film Brain]], who will sometimes make episodes more British than other contributors would (specially when dealing with works that hardly went out of the UK such as ''Fat Slags'').* ''Franchise/{{Noob}}'' was created by a guy living in southeast France. Guess where all characters whose place of residence has been mentioned live.* Twin Galaxies, an organization and website dedicated to keeping track of video game world records, was founded by Americans. Guess where most of the "world" records come from? It doesn't help that most of its officials are American, meaning that players from Europe, Japan, or worse, non-major territories will have a harder time getting their world records validated.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]* An episode of the animated series ''WesternAnimation/{{Freakazoid}}'' had Freakazoid being... Freakazoid by traveling back in time to prevent UsefulNotes/WorldWarII by preventing the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor in 1941. In RealLife, UsefulNotes/WorldWarII started in 1939 or earlier - the US simply didn't fight in it until 1941. ''WesternAnimation/{{Freakazoid}}'' quietly assumed that World War II ''did not exist'' until the United States was attacked, completely ignoring earlier events that did not directly involve the United States such as Japan's invasion of China in 1937 and Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939.* In ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'', a number of the Transformers seem to have accents which, by Earth standards, would come from different countries (Blitzwing is German, Jetfire and Jetstorm are Russian, Master Yoketron appears to be some form of Japanese, and so on). But there's rarely more than one of any non-American accented Transformer, and the majority of accents are American.** Averted in ''WesternAnimation/TransformersCybertron'', where everyone's accents are all over the freaking map for no particular reason.* The ghosts of ''WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom'' can turn invisible and fly incredibly long distances... yet, even after the presence of the half-ghost superhero in Amity Park who beats them time and again becomes well-known, they never try making their debut somewhere else and coming for Amity Park when they're a bit more established. The rest of the world is also suspiciously inactive about the whole "ghosts exist!" thing when it gets out; the only sign that it even exists is the occasional Guys in White attack or Danny having to pursue a ghost he wasn't able to stop in Amity Park for some reason.** There actually is an explanation in the series; ghosts can only enter Earth through the Ghost Zone, of which the only one exists in Amity Park--though that brings up even more questions.** Danny's parents are the only people to make a stable portal to and from the Ghost Zone. Usually Danny intercepts any ghosts that get through the portal before they get too far. Danny takes his role seriously.* ''WesternAnimation/IlEtaitUneFois'': The French series ''Once Upon a Time… Man'' (French: Il était une fois… l'homme) has its own problems on occassion. In 26 episodes, aired between 1979 and 1981, the show covers world history from the birth of planet Earth and the evolution of life up to the 1970s. While fairly accurate and attempting to be objective, the show covers important events and eras as seen from a Western perspective. Most of the action takes place in Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. Figures like Pericles, UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar, UsefulNotes/TheProphetMuhammad, Charlemagne and [[UsefulNotes/PeterTheGreat Peter I of Russia]] get entire episodes devoted to them. But the cultures of the rest of Asia, Africa and pre-Colombian America are hardly represented. For example, out of the entire history of China, only Kublai Khan gets the spotlight treatment and then only through his interactions with UsefulNotes/MarcoPolo. The creators tried to make up for this by making a sequel entitled ''Once Upon A Time...In America'', which [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin focused on the history of the Americas]], including pre-Colombian times.* Of course, American kid shows with a world history theme tend to be guilty of the same thing: ''WesternAnimation/{{Histeria}}'' did two episodes each on the American revolution and the American civil war (in addition to dealing with these events in other episodes as well), while in ''WesternAnimation/TimeSquad'', every other location and period the squad visited was in the U.S. after 1776.* The file card bios for an inordinate amount of Franchise/{{GI Joe}} characters indicate they're from Rhode Island (the website yojoe.com has a list of all the Joes by state...RI wins by quite a margin). Seems strange that such a small state could produce so many badasses...until you realize Rhode Island is where the corporate headquarters of Hasbro is.* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Battletoads}}'' cartoon pilot. Of all the places on the InsignificantLittleBluePlanet where T. Bird could find three dudes to turn into Battletoads, he had to pick Oxnard, California.* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'':** The government isn't just ''like'' the U.S. government, it ''is'' the U.S. government. The flag of the World resembles the American one, the Earth's president lives in the White House and the people are called "Earthicans." Also, there are only two significant political parties to vote into office, both of them American. ** When UsefulNotes/RichardNixon first runs for President of Earth, someone objects that the Earthican Constitution states that nobody can be President more than twice. Apparently being President of the US counts as being President of the Earth.* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':** The show has been known to be guilty of treating Springfield as if it is in California, since that is where the writers live, and according to the DVD commentaries they are aware that this trope has been in effect. Most notable is the weather - Springfield is often shown as bright and sunny year round (the exception being Christmas, when it is usually portrayed as permanently snow-covered for thematic reasons). This being The Simpsons, it has been [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]].-->'''Lisa''': It was an unseasonably warm February 14th, so the children walked home without jackets.** The couch gag of "Them, Robot" shows The Simpsons hanging up a poster in 1989 with the text: "America, the most powerful country in the world". Then the years pass by and in 2012 (the year of broadcast) they pull the old text down to replace it with a new one: "America, too big to fail (we hope)". This is clearly aimed as a spark of hope to the American viewers in light of people suffering under the economic crisis, which nevertheless is a universal problem, not just of America alone. Furthermore, even though the creators try to put in a little MyCountryTisOfTheeThatISting humor it still comes across as if the rest of the world should solely pity the poor Americans, while other countries like Greece or Iceland were hit far more seriously by the economic crisis than the USA. ** In 2014 Scottish people were allowed to vote whether they wanted Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom or become independent? The makers of ''The Simpsons'' made a short promo starring their Scottish character Groundskeeper Willie vocally explaining why Scotland ''should'' become independent. Many people in Scotland weren't amused, because the Americans who made it seemed to think that every country ruled by the British naturally wants to become independent, [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution just like the USA did in 1776]]. This would be like Scot making a video advocating the independence of The People's Republic of New Jersey, The Holy State of Utah, or New England. * ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' is set in (and named after a region of) Colorado, as creators Creator/TreyParkerAndMattStone were raised there and met at the University of Colorado. Cartman has also been borrowed by the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpmTOVJPP-Y Denver Nuggets]] (and in a case of headquarters instead of hometown provincialism, the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hPmdtd_Shw Los Angeles Kings]]).** Additionally, Parker was RaisedCatholic and thus every non-Jewish person in town practices that particular branch of Christianity, despite the fact that in Colorado Protestants outnumber Catholics 2:1. * In a bit of a twist, the ''WesternAnimation/EarthwormJim'' cartoon takes place in "Terlawk", a spin on creator Doug Tennpel's hometown of Turlock, California. One episode even has a joke attempting an explanation why there's so many alien attacks (an old guy put graffiti on a deep space probe daring aliens to destroy the town).* While ''WesternAnimation/ChipNDaleRescueRangers'' loves to throw in some obvious BigApplesauce for good measure (Chrysler Building, Twin Towers, mentioning the Statue of Liberty without mentioning its hometown), it also slips in a lot from Los Angeles in general and Hollywood and Burbank in particular where it was made. The police wear LAPD uniforms and drive LAPD-colored cars, the pilot "To the Rescue" features the [=L.A.=] city hall as well as Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, Seymour's Travel Agency in "It's a Bird, It's Insane, It's Dale!" is located near Lankershim Boulevard and Cahuenga Boulevard which meet in Studio City, and "The Luck Stops Here" mentions Flower Street (they're mentioned again in "A Wolf in Cheap Clothing"), one of which stretches from Hollywood to Burbank. Perhaps this is what [[WordOfGod Tad Stones]] meant with the "West Coast city with an East Coast flair".[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]* A lot of songs that have become "classics" in a certain language are often just translated covers. "Music/MyWay" by Music/FrankSinatra, for instance, is not American in origin, but a cover of "Comme d'Habitude" by French singer Claude François. Several traditional children's songs also exist in French, German, English, Dutch, Spanish, Italian versions and it's often difficult to trace which one was the original.* In Western society centuries old European and American art are often seen as historically and aesthetically important, while art from Latin America, Africa, Oceania and Asia is regarded as "primitive" and without depth. * A London newspaper made a ranking of "most appropriate cities to be the world's capital" (without explaining why). Guess which was number one.* Wondering why so many Chinese restaurants [[UsefulNotes/CuisinesInAmerica in the US]] claim to cook Hunan-style? When UsefulNotes/RichardNixon went to China, he was greeted with a lavish banquet. Whenever he found a dish he particularly enjoyed, he'd ask [[UsefulNotes/MaoZedong Chairman Mao]] where it came from (seeking to avert this trope and demonstrate his knowledge of and respect for the diversity of Chinese culture -- "I know you're a big country with lots of different cuisines, just like us!"). Mao, having grown up in Hunan Province, would always say it was from the Hunan area. Nixon came back singing the praises of Hunan-style cuisine.* [[https://youtu.be/4xO8PhBYREc?t=13m5s One of New TV Lebanon's old news intros]] had a globe that depicted Africa, Eurasia and the Pacific, ''but not the Americas''.* Computer programs like Microsoft Word often have the default language setting as American English, which is frustrating for any other English speakers, who want spell check to stop telling them they spelled "colour" wrong. * Some tech or web companies from California's Bay Area or Silicon Valley usually show their publicity in their home region.** Guess what is Yelp's default city.** For a while, [=MacIntosh=]'s spell check did not recognize the word "cooperation" (recognizing it only in its hyphenated state, "co-operation") and replace it with the word "Cupertino." Cupertino is a small town in California near Silicon Valley where Apple is located that, were it not for this quirk of that spell check, would be mostly unknown to anyone else and would otherwise be unlikely to be part of a spell check's word list.* Many websites that ask for country of origin when making an account have the default as "USA", and have it at the top of an otherwise alphabetical list.* Likewise, many Japanese websites list the 47 prefectures of Japan first when asking for members' locations. "Overseas" is almost always listed last, and hardly ever allows you to specify where. However, Japanese websites that have gained more international members (and have been translated into other languages), such as Pixiv and Nico Nico Douga, have started to avert this, allowing members to specify which country they're from. * The FilmAtEleven trope doesn't account for the fact that in the Central and Mountain Time Zones the late local newscast has always been at 10:00 pm. Plus, in all time zones {{FOX}} affiliates have their late local news one hour earlier than the other networks (though of course the trope pre-dated the creation of FOX by several decades).* The reason for geocentric model. Everyone who cared knew that the Earth is round as early as III century BC, but we've needed a telescope to stop assuming that the Earth is the center of the universe. Not to mention the trouble Nicolaus Copernicus endured for daring to believe in a Solar System model with the Sun in the middle.** In a sense, this happens repeatedly in humanity's understanding of the universe. At first, people thought Earth was the largest thing in the universe and everything else had to be the little specks seen in the sky (or the big specks known as the Sun and the Moon). Then, people accepted that the Earth is not of any special importance to the Solar System but still thought the Solar System encompassed the known universe with the stars being a speckled backdrop beyond the furthest planets. Then, the Milky Way was discovered to be a vast collection of stars comparable to our Sun, half of whom have planetary systems like ours, but the Milky Way was then thought to be the extent of the universe. Then, the Andromeda Galaxy was discovered to be a galaxy similar to the Milky Way and we expanded our scope of the universe to an unimaginably large collection of such galaxies. Now there's reason to believe that the universe we live in might not be the only one to exist.* The standard barcode with 13 digits used world-wide is the EAN: European Article Number. The 12-digit number only used in North America is the UPC: Universal Product Code. Go figure.* President [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush George Bush Jr.]] commemorated D-Day in 2004 by calling it a day when "the USA was saved from the Nazis".* Speaking of Nazis, because such films tend to be made by Americans movies about World War II tend to either entirely diminish or not even mention Canada's contributions to the war (Film/{{Argo}}) or are rewritten entirely to replace Canadians with Americans (Film/{{U571}} and Film/{{Gold}}).* Thanks to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content "Canadian content" laws]], listening to an oldies radio station in Canada is a surreal experience, especially for non-Canadians. Because 35-40% of the songs have to be by Canadian artists, you'll hear a couple familiar hits, then a song you've never heard before by a Canadian, then back to the familiar hits. And Canadian artists who managed to become successful internationally are overrepresented. If you knew nothing about 1970s pop music and listened to a Canadian oldies station, you'd end up with the impression that Anne Murray, The Guess Who and Gordon Lightfoot were major superstars. The same rules occasionally have spillover effects: for instance, in TheNineties, at least one of the major alternative-rock stations in the UsefulNotes/{{Detroit}} radio market was actually based in Windsor, across the Canadian border; the effect was (1) there was a ''lot'' of Music/BarenakedLadies played on that station, to the point that people got sick of it, and (2) a not insubstantial number of Michiganders have not only heard of Music/TheTragicallyHip, but actually like them (unlike most of the US).* A great deal of reporting on "Canadian culture" tends to operate on the assumption that readers are primarily interested in how Canada is different than the United States. This is true for Americans and Canadians, but often less than helpful for the rest of the world. For example, a list of "Canadian foods" will inevitably feature a lot of relatively obscure snack foods that can't be bought in the United States, such as ketchup-flavored potato chips, but not bother to mention more common Canadian things like s'mores or root beer that Americans would take for granted as normal, but people outside North America might find curious or distinctive.* The phrase "God's own country" has been used by Americans, Australians, New Zealandians, Scots, Irish people, Indian people, but always for their own nation.** Music/{{U2}} intentionally used this idea to write their song "In God's Country", which is officially about America, but the lyrics are vague enough that fans from every country in the world see it as referring to their country.* The UsefulNotes/AcademyAward event: All movies nominated are predominantly American and British. Foreign entries are usually forced to compete with one another in the ''Foreign Language Picture'' section and only five will be picked out. Occasionally a non-American or non-British movie will be featured in the other categories, but this doesn't happen much, left alone winning an award. ** In the academy's defense, they also avert this sometimes. The Lifetime Achievement Award has honoured more American and British artists, but it has also been awarded to film-makers around the world: Creator/JeanRenoir and Creator/JeanLucGodard (UsefulNotes/{{France}}), Creator/FedericoFellini and Creator/MichelangeloAntonioni (UsefulNotes/{{Italy}}), Creator/AkiraKurosawa (UsefulNotes/{{Japan}}), Creator/SatyajitRay (UsefulNotes/{{India}}), Andrzej Wajda (UsefulNotes/{{Poland}}). In addition to honorary awards for film historian Henri Langlois. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences ([=AMPAS=]) in its day job plays an important role in maintaining archives and restoring films.** Likewise the obituary In Memoriam montage has over the years honoured deaths in international film (the recent one in 2016, honoured the passing of Belgian avant-garde director Chantal Akerman who is not even mainstream ''in Europe''). Mostly because the people working these montages tend to be major cinephiles themselves, and more attuned culturally to films from other nations. * Local TV news stations in the USA often focus on the city in which the station is located, occasionally to the near-exclusion of cities not directly adjacent to the city in which the station is located.** This is especially noticeable in places whose media markets cover multiple states, such as the Chicago market; anything that happens on the Indiana side of the border[[note]]northwest Indiana is within the Chicago media market, ''directly bordering'' the city itself[[/note]] won't even be covered or even mentioned in passing unless it is exceptionally newsworthy. Especially infuriating when you see the local outlets give lots of coverage of some festival in Oak Lawn[[note]]on the Illinois side[[/note]], but no mention of a murder in, say, Crown Point[[note]]on the Indiana side, 30 minutes away[[/note]].** Cities at the edge of the media market are likely to suffer from this treatment as well. If a major local event happens in Bemidji, Minnesota, good luck finding coverage of it on UsefulNotes/TwinCities television stations.* American adaptations of non-American television shows frequently fall victim to this: people have referenced the "Canadian spin-off" ''Dragons Den'' of the American show ''Shark Tank''. Not only did ''Shark Tank'' begin a few years ''after'' ''Dragons Den'' hit the air, both shows are local franchises of the original show that started in Japan, ''Money Tigers''.* "But enough about you, here's New Jersey" is a running joke among the residents of New York City as city news outlet (particularly traffic and weather) often dedicate as much time to discussing the neighboring state of New Jersey as they do discussing things locally. Partially this has to do with the fact many commuters live in the New Jersey but also the fact that space for large operations like news broadcasters is more available there (only a few, very successful and established outlets can afford to operate out of NYC). This is mirrored somewhat with New Jersey's southern counties and Philadelphia; South Jersey does get decent coverage by Philadelphia media, although because Philly is smaller and less expensive than NYC, the outlets are more likely based in the city itself. Where New Jersey gets the shaft mediawise is Central Jersey, which unfortunately for all involved is where the state's capital of Trenton sits. Neither Philadelphia nor New York outlets seem to have much interest in reporting the goings-on in N.J. government, as it is literally on the border between their two respective spheres of influence: it sits on the other side of the river from Pennsylvania, and Mercer County (where Trenton is) is part of the New York metropolitan area for statistical purposes (based on economic connections) but is part of the Philadelphia media market. Because Trenton is so peripheral, it doesn't get much media coverage, which feeds into the ability of New Jersey politicians to engage in the shady dealings for which they are so famous.[[/folder]]